Daddy, y u do dis?
My father instructed me on the glory that is the peanut butter and nectarine sandwich. You say you like peanut butter and banana? You fucking peasant.
Alas, to be glorious it must be a good nectarine. When a nectarine is good, it’s not good. It’s amazing. And so, you want every nectarine to be like that. But how come half the time the nectarines are total dog shit? Like, you buy these nectarines, and they look nice, and everything seems like it’s going to be fine, but what you got was dog shit.
Not, “Oh, this nectarine isn’t as good as those last ones.” No, it is literal canine feces. There is no in between. Fifty percent of the time it’s the best piece of fruit you ever had, and the other half it’s, “Fuck. This tastes like the inside of an adult diaper at a low budget nursing home.”
“Get your money back,” you say. Fuck you. That involves doing things like hanging onto receipts and other “being organized” kinda shit people who’ve never had really amazing sex do. Hang onto the nectarine receipt … What am I? A fucking nectarine accountant?
And what’s worse than that waste of money is that buying the dog shit nectarines actually makes your life worse. You’ve got the expectation of amazing nectarine juice tickling your tongue all while sending a self-satisfied rush to your brain that “This is healthy. I’m a good person for eating a healthy food. I’m just like that model on Instagram with the ripped abs and perfect ass.” Yeah, so you get robbed of that little bit of pleasure from your miserable existence, and then the dog shit nectarines decide to really ass fuck you by bringing in a horde of goddamn fruit flies with them, and you spend a week trying to kill all the little bastards long after you threw out those dog shit nectarines that brought them in the house in the first fucking place.
I’m worried that I might be at a party one day and I’ll meet someone and ask them what they do for a living and they’ll say, “I’m a nectarine grower.” And depending on my most recent experience I might say, “Oh, I love nectarines.”
Or it might be: “FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCK I HOPE YOU FALL INTO A WOOD CHIPPER!”
When nectarines are poodle poop, you might be tempted to go with the peanut butter and banana sandwich as a backup, because bananas never let you down. But then you remember just how wonderful a good nectarine goes with peanut butter and realize it’s like being forced to hang out with your dorky step brother vs. visiting your super-hot cousin who looks up to you for some reason.
If not for my father introducing me to the hot cousin that is peanut butter and nectarine sandwiches, I’d be okay with hanging out with my peanut butter and banana step brother. A good peanut butter and nectarine sandwich makes its banana colleague the un-marinated flank steak of sandwiches.
Because bananas do not taste amazing. No one ever said, “Oh, God. This is an amazing banana. So fucking good.” That has not ever once happened in the history of fruit. It’s happened for strawberries and nectarines and mangoes and cherries and blackberries and even watermelon that was in the fridge so it was nice and crisp and cold. But not for bananas. They’re never more than just “good.” It’s fucking food. Shove in face hole.
But for their lack of tasty mouthgasm properties, bananas are perhaps the most underrated of fruits, because, as I already said, they never let you down. If it’s green, you wait a bit, then it’s good. And it’s not like some asshole pear or a goddamn avocado where it’s only good for 30 seconds. You have a solid 36-48-hour window on those suckers, depending on your tolerance for how soft they are.
And they’re cheap. The price is always pretty consistent; even people with student loan debt can afford them.
Bananas don’t fake you out like those bastard mangoes and nectarines do either. You can take one look at a banana and know if it’s good. There can occasionally be a hidden bruised part inside, but you tear that part away and the rest is fine. I’ve never seen a worm hole in a banana.
They bruise easily? Fuck you. Take some care. Quit pretending like it’s a dick and jerking off with it.
And if you leave them too long, the banana will still love you. One that’s gone too squishy is great in a smoothie, or you also have motherfucking banana bread (I just put some in the oven). If it’s ninety-eleven degrees outside and you don’t want to turn the oven on, you can freeze that shit and make banana bread on a cooler day. Although when you unfreeze a banana it really slimes out of the peel into the bowl like something out of Aliens when the eggs hatch. It looks gross, but it tastes fine all baked up. If the alien thing grosses you out, you can peel them while still frozen.
Bananas may not taste amazing, but my motherfucking banana bread does. You eat that shit.
P.S. My friend and writing protégé Emma Train – a registered dietitian and amazing cook – told me the best way to get rid of fruit flies is to suck them out of the air with the edging nozzle of the vacuum cleaner. Works like a hot damn and is devilishly fun to boot. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter in gratitude for this wisdom. You’ll never make another fruit fly trap again.
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James S. Fell is an internationally syndicated fitness columnist for the Chicago Tribune and author of Lose it Right: A Brutally Honest 3-Stage Program to Help You Get Fit and Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind, published by Random House Canada. He also interviews celebrities about their fitness stories for the Los Angeles Times, and is head fitness columnist for AskMen.com and a regular contributor to Men’s Health.