The Weird Sandwiches of Youth
In second grade, my favorite sandwich was a peanut butter and cherry: peanut butter spread with sliced maraschinos. I think that my dad might have made it up when my mom was out one day, and for an entire year, that is all I wanted to eat. And then, just when I was starting to glow from the inside out, I tired of it.
My husband, at unpredictable intervals, acts like it is acceptable to eat peanut butter and cheese sandwiches. I have never seen him do it, but regularly he’ll stroll into the living room late at night claiming that he just ate one. It is possible that he does this to push my buttons. He has also mentioned putting strawberry jam into an American cheese omelette. He is quite possibly a gastronomic enemy of state: not to be trusted.
Our son’s favorite sandwich is called a “prune quesadilla.” Like the peanut butter and cherry, it was created in a moment of parental desperation (my own) and has caught on like wildfire. I know that a quesadilla, by definition, implies cheese. But peanut butter can make tortillas stick together as well or better than cheese, and so we use the term loosely.
Unlike the sandwiches of our youth, or my husband’s current roster of sandwiches, it has a pretty good nutritional pedigree.
Prune Quesadilla
Ingredients
2 corn tortillas (Though, who is to stop you from using flour or some sort of hybrid? Not I.)
Peanut butter (Do everything in your power to get the kind that is ground peanuts and a bit of salt without sugar or replacement oils. If you are used to the processed kind, it will take next to no time to get readjusted to the good kind.)
Honey (We prefer the kind who lives in a bear, naturally.)
Prunes (There have been leaps forward in prune technology, and they are actually a moist, delightful, iron and potassium rich food. And it’s not like their sole purpose is improved gastric motility, so don’t be afraid of prunes.)
Procedure
Take 2 corn tortillas. Moisten both sides before putting them into the microwave for 30 seconds.
Transfer to a clean plate (one without condensation on it).
Spread with peanut butter. Drizzle with honey. Using poultry shears (or prune shears or a knife) snip bits of prune onto the peanut butter. Top with the other tortilla. Clap the quesadilla from hand to hand until it’s cool enough for a child to eat.
Slice, present, and wait for him to demand one the next day.
Church Avenue Chomp 
Thanks for figuring out our dinner for tonight! For the record, I LOVE strawberry jam on omlettes though not necessarily ones made with american cheese!
My favorite used to be PB (Skippy) and Japanese mayo, since I grew up in Japan. Japanese mayo is not Hellman’s (which it took me years to get used to)- it is much sharper and saltier, and more spreadable/less jelly-like than US mayo. They now make it with wasabi, in a lovely institutional shade of light green (and you can get it at any of a number of Japanese-food stores in Manhattan), which makes me think that the ground-peanuts PB plus this stuff and, say, some red pepper flakes might make a nice Thai-peanut sandwich. Throw some leftover Cafe Tibet slaw on there and that would make an amazing sandwich!
I don’t know if it would work with almond butter, as Mia is allergic to peanuts, but I might just give it a try!
Um. None of these sandwiches sound even the slightest bit appetizing and this is coming from a guy who used to eat Chef Boyardee beef ravioli cold, out of the can. Still. My dad used to eat tortillas—flour ones—with peanut butter, and maybe with mustard, and maybe—but this I’m probably making up—with both at the same time.
I love a PB sandwich on tortilla, it’s a yummy peanut butter pillow! I think the strangest childhood sandwich I ate was salami and butter on probably Wonder bread. It didnt stay a snadwich because the slices of salami would slideright out of the bread when you bit into it.
Also, a friend recommended rice crispies on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and I can’t get enough of them. I should be snap crackle and popping from the inside by now.