Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

Love satay, crave gado gado, adore salted peanuts… BUT…despise, hate, loathe peanut butter. Figure that.

Then a 500ml jars of Pic’s extra crunchy was marked down 40 per cent at the local ‘shop and bleed’.

But I love a bargain, so after 70 years of hating peanut butter, I gave Pics a chance.

It was full immersion – I got a tablespoon full and gobbed it.

Three days later the jar was empty.

Great! Another addiction.

And one clear glass peanut butter jar amongst all the green bottles in the recycling in.

That got us talking about weird and wonderful food combinations – the nutcase things that otherwise quite sane, rational people sneakily do with food.

Sneakily, because they’re embarrassed.

A friend...which makes it sound like I have more than one...smears peanut butter on scrambled eggs.

“Well, I love eggs and I love peanut butter.

"So combine the two and double the pleasure.”

Taste aside, imagine what it looks like – a ritual disembowelling?

You’d only do that at home, never while breakfasting down The Strand.

“Will Madame be having beurre d’arachide with her oeufs brouilles this morning?”

Of course she won’t.

‘Student food’ (sidehead)

But what possessed someone in the first place to try peanut butter on scrambled eggs?  

Why did they think that would be good idea?

Here’s another crazy office combo.

Buttered toast with peanut butter.

Good so far. Then sieve out the noodles from two minutes noodles and put them on top. And add chopped frankfurters.

Umm…why?

“Student food” I am told.

“Poor man’s chicken satay. Frankfurters only when I could afford them.”

A real explanation is a craving for weird food combinations may signal something is out of balance.

But it doesn’t mean that person needs a certain type of food.

A crazy craving may point to dehydration, stress or sleep deprivation.

“Garcon, I am thirsty, uptight and tired. Scrambled eggs slathered with peanut butter s’il vous plait.”

What about the guy who absolutely refuses to eat a meat pie – crap food, junk, unhealthy – but two or three times a week he will snack on mince savouries. “Smaller so they’re not as bad.”

Is that what they call deductive fallacy?

Kind of like saying: ‘Dogs have four legs, dogs are animals so all animals have four legs’.”

Strawberries with black pepper (sidehead)

Here’s a family recipe which may not catch on.

“I like toast, margarine and marmite with a chopped hard-boiled egg on top.”

She’s a uni student and with those dietary preferences will easily survive in a student flat.

Strawberries with black pepper.

Why? A food snob tell us the black pepper neutralises tartness, minimises overly sweet elements and makes the strawberry flavour shine through.

How about uncooked pastry?

This hankering started when a mother made a pie and child would nick the offcuts.

“As a kid I played with brightly coloured dough and thought it looked good enough to eat.”

It was, she did, and still does.

Vinegar (sidehead)

I have my own whacko food habit. Every time I go into the pantry I will take a swig of any sort of vinegar.

Just love the sour pungent aroma and acidity.

Glug, glug, glug.

I developed this weirdness nicking Dad’s pickled onions from a large crock in the cellar as a kid.

Eggs – cooked any way with tomato sauce. 

Butter – rolled into a ball, coated with sugar, refrigerated and scoffed.

Toast – buttered hot and smeared with vanilla or hokey pokey icecream?

Waffle – filled with pasta sauce. Parmesan optional.

Porridge – with a nob of butter or a fist full of chilli flakes.

Butter – grab a slice, au naturale, hook in.

Apples – with salt and pepper.

Sugar – a spoonful with 100s & 1000s sandwiches.     

Cottage cheese – with tomato sauce.

Popcorn – with tomato sauce leftover from the cottage cheese.

Ice cream – with soy sauce of course.

Hot cross buns with cheese and marmite.

Now I have learned a couple of things about myself while cobbling this nonsense together.

One is I am mildly brumotactillophobia – I have an irrational fear of different food items touching each other on my plate.

I am a separationist. It’s a mild manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder...to go with my more obvious and difficult to live with flaws.

And I am definitely mortuusequusphobic – literal Latin for dead horse phobia I believe – ‘dead horse’ being Aussie slang for tomato sauce.

I don’t fear tomato sauce, I just don’t like it.

I prefer to drown my food with Sriracha, HP or L&P.

Or my mum’s beetroot relish on poached eggs until it looks like a car crash.