A FLUFF PIECE

"What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?" Was the question my mom would ask me the beginning of every August, I'm sure for the first several years of my life the answer was yellow with white frosting. About the age of six or seven I realized it wasn't a matter of chocolate cake versus vanilla cake, it was a matter of not liking cake much at all. From then on it was either a birthday pie or Ice cream cake, and never chocolate as I was not a fan.

I think the only reason cake became such a downer for me was the texture. Even the moistest of cakes make me feel dry in the mouth and to this day I require copious amounts of milk to wash it down. I never had that feeling with pie, pudding or ice cream. I guess that's why when it came to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I was a jelly man. Be it Concord grape, blackberry, peach, boysenberry, loganberry, raspberry preserves or just plain ole broke assed store brand grape jelly...I loved them all provided there were massive quantities of them!

When it came time to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich the construction sort of went like this. Layer of peanut butter so thin you could read a newspaper through it on the bottom slice of wonder bread, (keep in mind folks this was before we knew white bread to be the devil) and on top of the peanut butter, oh I dunno...half an inch of jelly?! Yes mothers, just imagine having me for a child and the havoc I wreaked on innocent flooring, clothes and couches with my love of jellies, jams and preserves. When you weren't washing out grass stains and trying to figure out how I ripped such odd geometric patterns in my clothes, you'd be wondering how I got jelly on my back or the cuffs of my pants.

The other thing that came out of my obsession for all things jelly were obsessive compulsive traits when it came time for sandwich construction. When making the sandwich the peanut butter had to touch every square millimeter of bread as did the jelly. Don't ask me why, but to this day it drives me to fits of apoplexy to watch a commercial where the mom is spreading something, anything, on a slice of bread and it doesn't touch all the corners. Those poor unsuspecting children are going to be forced to have a poor topping to bread ratio. Surely there is some kind of law against this.

Because of this one trait it led to other OCD traits such as symmetry in all things. I don't like looking at asymmetrical buildings or food.  When I do things that require counting, I stop on even numbers. When it comes to using a coaster for a drink, I'll be damned if I let that drink sit anywhere outside of dead center of the coaster whether it's square or circular. What's that, does this mean I use a different bar of soap every time I wash my hands, or have to lock and unlock doors eight times every time I go in or out? No people, that would just be silly...but I do fold the paper that comes off from any drinking straw into a square.

So after my poor mother had grown tired of cleaning jelly out of, and off from, places jelly ought not to be. I was sat down in the living room with my father, brother and mother all looking ominously at me (if I had to guess I probably had jelly running from the corners of my mouth, a heart beating irregularly through a jelly stained T-shirt and eyes rolling back into my head) I was far too young and ignorant to realize the situation for what it was...a jelly intervention.

 I was put on Jelly probation and banished from eating it in any room but the kitchen, and in that room only at the table. I was also not in charge of the quantity of jelly at that point, as I obviously needed some tough jelly love. So my mother would portion it into a little ramekin for me to spread (as she didn't have the thirty minutes that would be required to hit every corner of the bread with the thickness and coverage I needed) and I remember looking sadly into the ramekin the same way I look at one of those jelly packs you get with your toast in a diner today.

Marshmallow cream has been around in one form or another since about 1896, and in my house it was used in the winter time as an addition to hot chocolate. I know what you're thinking...Pav, I thought you didn't like chocolate. Well let me just say this: The hot chocolate I had as a kid was about as far removed from actual chocolate as you could get, and besides... the amount of fluff I used made any chocolate flavors superfluous. About the time the fluff would be gone I would soon lose interest in the cocoa anyway, as the cocoa "dirt" at the bottom of the mug was in my mind bitter, and unappealing. I guess this must have been about the time my parents introduced me to the Fluffernutter which happened to coincide with me hitting rock bottom in my battle with jelly addiction.

For those of you not in the know with regards to a Fluffernutter it is simply this, a mouth full of amazing. It's a peanut butter sandwich with marshmallow fluff on top. I know it sounds silly to most of us in the northeast that someone wouldn't know the deliciousness that is the Fluffernutter, but I actually had to introduce it to friends of mine in the southeast. Yes fine and proud southerners, you do have jet-puffed marshmallow cream...I've known Fluff for a lot of years, and you jet-puffed...are no Fluff! Besides this, you fine people were only using this marshmallow cream, for the most part, as an ingredient in fudge and not in sandwiches.

Fluff started after two gentlemen from Swampscott, MA bought the recipe to Fluff for $500 dollars in 1920, after fighting in the infantry during WWI the Company that was formed was named Durkee-Mower after the founders. They made the marshmallow fluff in their kitchens at night and then sold it door to door during the day until local housewives demanded it be available at their local supermarkets. In 1929 they moved their factory to Lynn Massachusetts and have been there ever since. Since then they developed a raspberry and a strawberry flavored marshmallow fluff, and in 2009 the Massachusetts state senate tried to pass a bill making the Fluffernutter the state sandwich. Finally a bill filled with Fluff that I'd actually care about!

I found that when making a Fluffernutter sandwich my mother didn't ration the Fluff and it filled the roll of Jelly nicely as something sweet and not hygroscopic to the point that I felt as though I was going to choke to death. The other upside is that Fluff spreads easily and evenly as it is self-leveling due to its viscous nature.  However this creates other problems, as Fluff is soft, smooth and creamy all at the same time; it requires an ice cream approach when eating it in any quantity as a sandwich ingredient.

I preferred the  rolling technique( Picture when you lick the cream from around the outside of a devil dog or get the drippings of an ice cream cone) which means licking marshmallow cream that makes its way outside the bread in between bites of the sandwich. I managed to perfect this technique, that in conjunction with few Fluff accidents and a somewhat unlimited supply, it became my go to favorite in lieu of jelly. I loved, and to this day still love the creamy vanilla flavor and the super smooth texture you can only get from Fluff. I'm a vanilla man myself although the strawberry and raspberry are good; they just aren't as versatile as the original and thus have no place in my pantry.

I can eat jelly now without embarrassing myself in public, but I still don't understand the teasing amount you get with your toast at restaurants. But just to make sure I don't ever get back to the place I used to be, of reckless and harmful use of raspberry preserves or the like. I like to pick up a tub of Fluff every now and again for that creamy goodness and the telltale batwings you get in the corners of your mouth, which is preferable to the alternative... Fluff on my keyboard or, The Cat.