PBJ

I still haven’t quite got my head around the desire behind the America PB&J - peanut butter and jelly (jam) sandwich. I’m all for a peanut butter sandwich but I’ve never fancied jam sangers and the thought of combining them is just weird.

But what if you didn’t need to open two different jars of spreads. What if you didn’t need the ampersand? What if it was simply peanut butter jam - PBJ?

A ripe peanut butter fruit

Enter the peanut butter fruit (Bunchosia glandulifera). A large shrub/small tree that produces fruit that tastes somewhat like peanut butter. I had to try. And I did try. And I subsequently pulled the tree out. The fruit did indeed resemble smooth peanut butter - a very similar mouth feel (think Mister Ed, although the peanut butter rumour was false), and a slightly ‘nutty flavour’. But it was definitely a novelty fruit, not exactly something I would be snacking on as my daily fruit ration. Maybe I should have turned it into jam, but let’s be honest, I still have a bag of rosella hips in the freezer from two years ago that I haven’t done anything with yet and I actually love rosella jam. The likelihood of me making said PBJ is pretty low…

For those of you who want to give it a shot, Bunchosia glandulifera, is, as mentioned before, a large shrub or small tree native to Central and South America. Not unattractive, and with the propensity to make a good hedge (although you are likely to chop off the flowers and fruit!). The flowers are delicate yellow sprays, followed by fruit that start green and ripen through orange to red. They are best eaten when red. They flower best in full sun, which was part of my tree’s problem as it needed to grow large and rangy to reach the sun and produce me some fruit. I guess I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I can’t, actually, grow everything on a 600 square meter block. I won’t stop trying, but occasionally I have to make the tough decision that something’s really not worth the effort. A jar of Bega’s super crunchy will do me fine.

Ripening fruit