peanutbutter ants

at the casa we eat a lot of peanutbutter. if we make it to saturday with even a trace of peanutbutter still in the jar, it is quite an accomplsihment. side note:salvadorans hate peanutbutter so my two salvadoran house mates are not a threat to the pb supply. anyway, we have ants in out kitchen, little bitty ones that crawl all over the walls in little lines-looks like they´re playing follow the leader. on my first night in el salvador, i decided i wanted a spoonful of peanutbutter (which is perfectly acceptable in my house), so i went looking for the pb but i couldnt find it in the cabinet which is where we keep it at home. someone told me to check the fridge (el refri) but it wasnt in there so out of routine i opened the freezer (el conngelador) and there it was. i thought nothing of it and took a generous spoonful of pb and was contenta.

well, about two weeks later a housemate mentioned that juan (our cc, which is essentially an ra but way more present) had been wondering since we arrived how the pb got from the freezer to the fridge and who had eaten some of it. i confessed thinking i had done something wrong, broken some unspoken peanutbutter rule, and all my housemates started laughing. they already had heard the story...upon opening the peanutbutter jar after it was in the cabineta on the morning of our arrival, juan had found it crawling with little ants. they are the size of one rainbow sprinkle/jimmie, and he panicked. in order to kill the ants he had put it in the freezer and would later scrape off the top layer. but i beat him to it! so to make sure you get this, i ate peanutbutter ants without knowing it! super-crujiente! (super crunchy!)

one of my salvadoran housemates, deysi, thinks this story is absolutely hilarious, which it is, and i have not heard the end of it! first it was how much extra protein i got with ants in the pb, then if ants get in anything like they did in our honey she will put it in my direction. and last night i made a beautiful lemon poppyseed bread with lemon glaze and deysi loved it. when she found out i made it she replied that i must like it so much because the seeds look like ants! i think i may never live this down! maybe i should do like the salvadorans do and not eat any more peanutbutter...