Peanut butter is a very popular food for my fan base: children. It is popular with the U.S. government, too, which qualifies peanut butter as a reasonable meat substitute for children. But many adults also love peanut butter, myself included!

When I was a child, my own mother always fed me that "healthy stuff" that needed to be stirred before each use. So when the mothers of my childhood friends exposed me to a wide variety of other peanut butters, I just "ate it up" (no pun intended)! And through those experiences, I determined that the best-tasting peanut butter to be had was Jif.

Once I became an adult and had full control over my grocery list, I permanently committed all of my peanut butter purchasing and consumption to "Jif" and no other. I confess that even when I worked for the company that manufactured Peter Pan Peanut butter, I remained ever faithful to Jif.

Can the definition of the word "rut" be applied to peanut butter? Hard to imagine, but yes, definitely in my case! I had no idea that I was in a rut, though until I played a game with my husband the other night: we had our own little peanut butter tasting.

Why did we do this? Well, some while ago Planters introduced their own version of peanut butter. Of course, I ignored them at that time. But we do love their peanuts, and so after several kitchen conversations with Mr. Webb, I finally admitted that they might know something about "peanut butter," too. Well, as you can see from the photo above, we went through with it. And the result? You guessed it: Planters won.

What a shock to my peanut-butter-belief-structure! How can I love Planters Peanut Butter more than Jif?

The moral of this little real-life parable is that we should remember to take a moment every now and then to try something new! So pull the family together in the kitchen and hold a peanut butter tasting!