South Dakota.  You should go.  If only to eat at Jerry’s Cakes & Donuts.  And ride the roads with Harleys galore.  Oh ya, and the Badlands and Mount Rushmore are pretty cool, too.

When the White Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Spread is gone, it’ll be the lowest point thus far in your eating career, no exceptions.  There will never be such a void.  Never a valley so deep, chasm so wide, but most importantly, never a jar so empty.  And you’ll look too, you’ll look deep into the bare pretzel peanut butter spread jar at the smeared remnants, the last slicks of white chocolate pretzel peanut butter goodness.  Maybe you’ll tear up a little bit, because that spread was just so, so good.

What is it about peanut butter that makes it so delicious?  At the most basic it’s peanuts, perhaps toasted and lightly salted, pulverized and ground into a luscious, rich nut butter.  Make butter out of anything really, and it’s hard to go wrong.  Take plain, simple lowly peanuts and elevate them from bar snack status into something wonderful.  It’s the nostalgic stuff of white bread peanut butter and jellies, peanut butter cups and, for a lucky few, peanut noodles and satay sauce.  So imagine the possibilities if you take peanut butter a step further.

This White Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Spread however goes above and beyond plain old creamy peanut butter.  With the addition of white chocolate and crushed pretzels, peanut butter is transformed into a rich, dessertesque White Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Spread.  And while it’s good enough to eat by the spoonful, a little smear of this spread on a PB&J or peanut butter and honey sandwich, an extra slick in a Gruyere or sharp cheddar grilled cheese, or perhaps most ridiculously layered between slices of chocolate cake is everything good in the world.

Recipe on the following page.

Everybody should have a porch swing.

Bye bye.

I wonder, I wonder, where could I be?

Washington D.C.! (Rhyme. Ha.)

For the next 10 weeks, prepare for Food from the Capitol.  Or at the very least, lots of buildings and cappuccino shots…

Though I promise, raise your right hand, to provide at least a couple snapshots of food in the District over the next couple months.  Happy 2011!

What’s the thing to do when you leave the frigid north and go on holiday break?

Apparently, the thing to do is eat a lot of food, go camping, and embark on a 72 hour picnic.  Ramen, steak, Cuban rice and beans, pastries, and salted caramel hot chocolate, all enjoyed at the ‘best restaurant around.’  The beach.

Hello, California.