Naked but Eating Peanut Butter

In the category of food, next to my daily bread I most value peanut butter. I waxed eloquent on that subject two years ago on the old LaMarotte (link); there I called America the Zone of Heavenly Oils and concluded the post by saying: “One cannot praise peanuts, and peanut butter, frequently and ardently enough.” So I am prejudiced.

The other day I had occasion to note here that Global Warming was threatening coffee and cocoa—two more natural products I’d add to the list of the Indispensables. Elsewhere (link) I have suggested that in a forced-choice between coffee and chocolate on the one hand and gasoline on the other, I would choose coffee and chocolate. Now we learn that (groan! wail! sob!) peanuts are under attack—and possibly from the same cause. Drought has devastated the peanut crop—and plantings were, in any case, already down. Why? Well, farmers prefer to grow corn and cotton because these crops yield higher profits. So is it to be Cotton or Peanut butter? My choice is already made. I’d gladly go naked if I could still have my jar of Smucker’s Natural Peanut butter. And I’ll gladly walk to the store to get it, lacking gasoline, so that I might buy Taster’s Choice and Lind’s dark chocolate while I am out—but with an old newspaper draped around my privates using my last cotton string.