When I was Beiber's age, one of my favorite foods was a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Back then, I would use Wonder bread, margarine, Crunchy Skippy, and Smucker's Strawberry Jelly.
Fast forwarding to the 21st century, I still enjoy the grilled PB&Js but I make a healthier version compared to the ones I ate back in the day as the aforementioned ingredients had high fructose corn syrup, the jelly didn't actually have any fruit in it only juice, and who really knows what embodies margarine.
So nowadays, here's how I make a health-upped grilled PB&J...and this sandwich happens to be vegan as well because I use Earth Balance instead of butter/margarine, and really I was impressed how this spread grills on the bread.
Ingredients
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Food For Life Ezekiel bread. The Ezekiel breads contain both soluble and insoluble fiber, and are made of organic sprouted grains, wheat, soybeans, lentils, and seeds which provides the fiber. See, now you can impress people and say you know how to get fiber with a PB&J.
- Whole Foods 365 brand Peanut Butter is my favorite! They also have the fresh ground nut butter machines and sometimes I'll get the honey roasted peanut butter. I love the fresh ground because it's nothing but peanut and salt...that's it. Basically anything without added sugars, and artificial ingredients or preservatives is better. It doesn't have to be organic. Nice alternatives to the PB are almond and cashew butter.
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Fruit spread or if you feel like making a holiday like version use Pumpkin Butter. Now I like the fruit spread over jelly or jam because the spreads are pretty much just ground up fruit. Jellies and Jams can have lots of additives, extra sugars, and preservatives added into them. I like the Whole Foods 365 fruit spreads because they just use fruit and some grape juice for a sweetening boost plus it's really cheap. Another option is to go to Farmer's markets or to your friends who enjoy making homemade all natural spreads, jams and jellies and getting a fresh far from them!
- Earth Balance Soy-Free buttery spread. The Soy-Free version is my fave because it tastes the best and well, it's soy-free. I'm actually really impressed how well this spread grills on bread. Just visually, when cooking, I could not really see any big difference between this vegan spread and butter or margarine. I don't care for the other Earth Balance products with soy in it because the soy taste is off to me...but that's just my taste buds.
Let's start cookin'
- Heat up a pan to medium high
- While you're waiting for the pan to heat up, slather buttery spread on one side of each piece of Ezekiel bread for your sandwich.
- Grill the buttered side first until it's a nice golden crispy brown
- When the buttered side is done, flip bread over and toast up the dry side a little bit.
- Spread PB on one piece, and the fruit spread on the other slice, and slap together. Sometimes, if I don't want a whole sandwich, I'll just grill up one piece of bread and put the PB & fruit spread on top and eat like regular toast.
Doesn't that look divine? Well get noshing!
