Almost an Elvis

I recently saw a Panera bread advertisement on YouTube that showed a peanut butter, bacon, and honey sandwich. The sandwich looked oh-so tasty. (The ad is here.) Throw in some sliced banana and you’ll have yourself an Elvis. Although, technically, I don’t think you need honey to make an Elvis.

When I saw the add I thought to myself, “Ooh, I have to try that.”

Like most people (I assume), I’ve had my share of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I’ve also eaten peanut butter and banana sandwiches, with peanut butter on one slice of bread and mayonnaise on the other. They’re really good. Not Michelin Guide good, of course, but still good. It never crossed my mind to add crisp, fried bacon to the mix.

The closest I came to a peanut butter and bacon sandwich happened when I was in the 8th grade. I had a taste for peanut butter and baloney sandwiches. Every morning I made my school lunch: white bread with peanut butter and a slice of baloney right out of the package. Plus a moon pie. It’s gastronomic heaven – if you’re a 14 year old boy.

Sometimes I prepared fried baloney as a meal for one. And sometimes I would put the fried baloney on a plate and spread peanut butter on it and then roll it up like a fat, meaty joint. Baloney was the Zig-Zag paper and peanut butter was the weed. That PB and baloney combo was good, too. You really can’t mess up peanut butter and baloney. You can’t do much to make it worse, and you can do little to make it better. It is what it is.

But peanut butter, bacon, and honey – that’s another critter, and as it turns out, a popular one. So I had to investigate it.

All I had on hand was whole wheat bread. I like whole wheat bread so that wasn’t an issue. I had real peanut butter in the fridge. The ingredient list for real peanut butter states “Ingredients: peanut butter, salt.” (Look at the ingredients in your favorite brand of peanut butter.) Why keep it in the fridge? Because if you don’t, real peanut butter soon separates into peanuts and oil. And finally, I had low-sodium bacon in the fridge. Unfortunately, I had no honey and didn’t feel like buying a jar of honey for this one taste test.

I toasted the bread and nuked the bacon. I smeared PB on the two slices of toast and added the bacon. I glommed the two slices of bread together, trapping the bacon inside, and I ate the PB and bacon sandwich. The verdict? Good, but not as good as a PB and baloney sandwich. Sorry, Panera. You tried, but when it comes to junk food, it’s difficult for even the best chef to match the gustatory delights dreamed up by a 14 year-old boy.