BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:55 p.m.

Peanut butter.....I just love peanut butter. In fact, I love salted peanuts, chocolate coated peanuts, split peanuts, raw peanuts, peanuts in the shell and especially peanut butter cookies. They have been a favourite since childhood and no other cookie could meet the taste of the exquisite peanut butter cookie, except maybe the peanut cookies made by Voortman, the Canadian manufacturers. They have actual peanuts on top...yummmmmmm! But those things are things of a bygone era that I seldom eat anymore. The weight says no, the diabetes says no and the arthritis says no. I guess I will just have to settle with an occasional cracker with peanut butter or perhaps a piece of toast with some on it. It is funny how you connect to peanut butter.....my connection is Kraft Foods as my nextdoor neighbour was a Vice President of Production there back in the 1950s and he often turned up with peanut butter. Then there was the time I arranged to have the President of Kraft Foods Canada bring the President of Kraft International to speak to a thousand students at the Mount Royal Hotel in Mountreal when I was President of the Georgian Marketing Society at Sir George Williams University in 1971. It is now called Concordia University after the amalgmation with Loyola College. That event with Kraft was a real taste of Peanut Butter, and a whole lot of other things too. The one thing I regret about peanuts occurred about ten years ago and was quite a lesson for me. I arranged a big night at the ski club for the volunteers and as an added touch, I brought a gigantic bowl of peanuts for everyone to munch on at the bar. When I went to get a drink, they had disappeared. Upon asking I was told that one of the girls had an allergy to peanuts and could not be around them. Well, everyone in my family had allergies of one type or another so I got upset thinking that she had no right to complain and could just put up with the peanuts. Well, she and her friend, a girl from the club who I did not like to begin with went off the handle on the subject. Obstinate as I can get occasionally because of past experience with this friend, I blew up and turned my own personal friendship with the sufferer into a hate on her part because of my ignorance. Little did I know then that peanuts sitting in a bowl could kill someone by a slight bit of contact. When I found that out some time later, I felt really bad about the situation but by then, I was no longer around the club because I could not go to meetings as I had trouble with my hearing there. I also moved, had a few bad years and never recovered. All I can do today is hope that someday, she will forgive me and my lack of knowledge about peanut allergies, one of the many things I missed learning in my earlier years. We all have these long held regrets. The nice thing about it is that now, every time I think about it, I can eat a few peanuts and not worry about being allergic to peanuts myself. President Carter of the USA, the man who peanuts made, would be proud!