new york diary - day 7

The morning was spent in the park, taking pictures of the pretty little lake and all the geese. Molly was interested but not keen on getting too close. Which was fine by me. I only like geese from a distance as well.

This afternoon, I managed to drive to the grocery store and back, thankful the entire way for GPS. The meandering roads make no sense to this "gimme a grid" prairie girl. The only real problem was my lead foot, which I totally had to watch. That 50 on the speedometer is not in kilometers!!!

Okay... before I tell you this next bit, let me assure you that I'm not pregnant or crazy (or pregnant and crazy). After my big excursion, I rewarded myself with my first peanut butter and pickle sandwich. The thing is, on the plane I was reading The Round House, which has this passage:

First, we unstuck the bread slices carefully from the peanut butter. Next we tucked in my mother's famous little crunchy pickles. Last, we closed the sandwiches back up. The pickle juice salted the peanut butter, cut the stickiness so you could swallow each bite, and added just the right hot, sour bite to the nuts.

And when I arrived at Kana and Brad's the same day I read that passage, an article on this Depression-era invention was on their coffee table. I could only take that as a sign. I wanted to make it with sour dough bread but there wasn't any at the grocery store. Used the sweet pickles already in the fridge. The ciabatta was a good bread choice, but bread and butter pickles would be much better. The sweet pickles lacked zing. Natural peanut butter is a must. Will definitely experiment further.