All it took was one little post to get my memory rampaging through it’s back closet. And recover the joyful days of childhood, when I and my contemporaries reveled in the realm of insanely yummy sandwich spreads…
Marshmallow Fluff and a classic Fluffernutter sandwich:
Fertile ground for cultivating the next newstalgia star!
Gather round, Millennials – and you younger kids, too! And I’ll share with you a tale of the Olde Days, when calories didn’t really count and folks, on the whole, didn’t give a darn about so-called ‘proces-sed foods’ and their additives…
Crazy good treats…
I remember, when I was very young, that the choice of sandwich fillings and breakfast spreads was really limited – at least compared to what we have available these days.
There were the usual fruit jams and jellies. And of course, peanut butter and honey. Plus, occasion-ally, ‘Grandma’ specialties such as homemade apple butter. But that was about it.
By contrast, there are many more possibilities these days. Not the least of which are the nouveaux-legends such as Nutella! Other-cultural treats such as tahini and hummus, Marmite/Vegemite, avo-cado spread, and just about every kind of nut butter you can think of are now permanent residents in the condiments aisle.
Made our own fun…
It seems we kids of yesteryear really did make our own fun – not only on the playground, but at the breakfast table. And sometimes even in our lunch boxes.
I recall vividly the first time I changed-up my usual routine by mixing honey WITH butter, rather than buttering my toast and adding honey on top. It was a whole different – transcendental – dimension! Mucking peanut butter in with honey was a natural follow-on. Then fruit preserves of all flavours with peanut butter.
An awakening…
Then… In the early 1970s, a watershed moment struck breakfast tables all across the western world. It was a historic triumph for the processed food industry, which created the first non-food food. They called it Marshmallow Fluff. And it was whipped up entirely from pure fat and sugar, additives and texturizers, and artificial flavourings and colourings.
It was like nothing we had ever experienced before!
Naturally, we tried mixing it with everything we already had available by way of breakfast toast and sweet, packed-lunch spreads. And, quick to pick up on trends, the food industry started to push it’s own combos, including the infamous Fluffernutter sandwich. That was simply two slices of plain white bread, one spread with peanut butter and the other with Fluff, before being closed – gently – so as not to force the seriously sweet, gloriously gooey fillings out the sides.
A jar too far?
Emboldened by the success of Fluff and its spinoffs, the processors relatively quickly introduced the next innovation.
Someone came up with the notion to market a pre-mixed spread of peanut butter striped with grape jelly. And they called it ‘Goober’. Whatever… Folks of all ages went nuts for it.
It was the 1980s by then: the ‘dark before the dawn’ of the ‘healthy-eating era’, when ‘health food’ stores, supplements and all sorts of news stories about un-healthy foods and ingredients fist started to surface in the mainstream news.
Life was never the same after that. For every new, sweet, fun new idea or product that came along, there was a trail of mis- or disinformation from the ‘healthy’ fanatics and the ivory-tower food re-searchers that stole the winds from its sails – or blew the bottom right out of the boat!
My take
It’s time for a newstalgic return of the best-of-the-worst breakfast and sandwich spreads! How do I know? The ‘tradition’ never really died! It’s just been waiting for a renaissance: Goober may have largely been forgotten, but it’s not gone. A quick check revealed it’s still available at many grocery stores, albeit ‘on the back shelves’…
But in keeping with the fundamental principles of newstalgia, they should be made of the best, healthiest versions of the necessary ingredients the food industry can provide. And of course, we must try mixing the old with the new, as well…
I can’t wait to try my first Fluffernutella sandwich!
~ Maggie J.