I'm grateful that peanut butter comes in straight and smooth-sided jars with large openings.
The other night, I had this strange dream. I had ordered a case of natural, chunky-style peanut butter online to be shipped to my home. I had gotten a stellar deal on this purchase. When the case arrived, I opened the box, and to my surprise, the "jars" were tall, narrow, plastic squeeze bottles. I could only imagine the squeeze nozzle would get blocked by a chunky-style peanut fragment on the first squeeze. So I set out to decant these bottles into a large jar. Only, the insides of the squeeze bottle were convoluted and ridged, like a cross between a Gatorade bottle, a plastic applesauce jar, and a Honey Bear honey squeeze bottle. I used my most flexible, narrow rubber spatula, but was only able to get about 2/3 of the peanut butter out of the squeeze bottle. And I was picturing myself scraping out the natural peanut butter from every single squeeze bottle in the case.
Fortunately, I woke up about this point. But I did find myself surprised by my initial thought upon waking, "I'm so glad peanut butter doesn't come in narrow squeeze bottles."
I'm writing about this today, in part to amuse you. But also, I was thinking about what I would do if this did happen to me. A sane person would simply return the case of squeeze-bottle peanut butter. But remember, I had gotten a great deal on that peanut butter. The frugal side of me wouldn't want to lose the "savings" of such a deal. I would get out the most flexible and narrow rubber spatula from the drawer and begin scooping and scraping as best I could. I would probably then try shaking the remaining peanut butter up with a liquid for making a smoothie or adding to a peanut sauce. I am certain that I would spend more time extracting as much peanut butter out as possible than my own time was worth. And I would console myself with the dollars and cents savings.
Weird dream. But it did make me think about the efforts I'd likely go to save food and money. What would you have done? Would you have returned the case to get a refund, or would you have tried to scrape the peanut butter out of the strange bottles?
