Extremism in the Pursuit of Trashiness is No Vice

Some folks might be insulted if one of their friends gave them a copy of “White Trash Cooking” for their birthday. But that gift, which was presented to me upon my 23rd birthday, ranks among the most thoughtful birthday gifts that I’ve ever received. For some reason, I felt compelled to bring “White Trash Cooking” into my former workplace in New York, and conduct a cubicle to cubicle version of the old classroom show ‘n’ tell. Among the oddities that I chose to highlight in my presentation to  each of my co-workers was a beverage recipe with the straightforward title “High Calorie Pick-Me-Up” and the following instructions and anecdote:

Pour a small bag of Tom’s peanuts into a cold Pepsi. Turn it up and eat and drink at the same time.

Raenelle told me that this was one of Betty Sue’s concoctions. She said: “But it’s so trashy she won’t own up to it!”

One of the reasons I focused upon this recipe is that as appalling as it is, I was nevertheless intrigued by it. As I’ve written previously, some of my favorite food and beveraging experiences are offbeat combinations of sweet and savory. And it was the one recipe in the entire cookbook where the originator actually felt enough shame about its trashiness that she tried to deny its ownership. Similar to Raymond and Connie Marble’s quest for the title “Filthiest People Alive” in John Waters’ movie Pink Flamingos, I wanted to assume the mantle of extreme trashiness and its concomitant shame if only for the brief span of time that it takes to down a Pepsi mixed with salted peanuts.

So I was surprised when my manager, who was a fairly colorful personality in an otherwise staid corporate accounting department, stated matter of factly that she had frequently enjoyed a slight variation of the “High Calorie Pick-Me-Up” during her childhood in Oklahoma. Her version involved a Dr. Pepper instead of a Pepsi, which sounded even trashier.

Although I was slightly disappointed that my manager had usurped any pretense that I had to extreme trashiness, I resolved to try her Dr. Pepper and salted peanuts variation.

So on one otherwise unremarkable Friday night, I decided to stir things up. I set off to the corner bodega and scored a can of Dr. Pepper and a small bag of Planter’s salted peanuts. I then emptied the contents of each into a pint glass and drank it down greedily. The cherry and prune notes of the Dr. Pepper blended surprisingly well with the salt and roasted peanut flavor, although I’m still not sure what to make of the unusual textural competition between the fizz of the carbonation and the crunch of the peanuts.

Recently, I discovered that far from being some sort of marginal white trash concoction, the “High Calorie Pick-Me-Up” actually enjoys a broad southern constituency as is evidenced by this hilariously disputatious thread on eGullet. And even stranger still, a not entirely dissimilar drink is enjoyed in some parts of the Middle East. The Lebanese enjoy a drink called jallab, which is a mixture of date syrup, rosewater, and pignoli nuts. In fact, the Lebanese Taverna serves the finest rendition of this that I’ve had. One wonders if one of the impassioned posters on the eGullet thread would recognize the kinship between these two beverages. Um, perhaps not. -AC