I never thought I would dread making a sandwich more in my life, but as a first-time EC Eats writer, there was only one thing in my mind that qualified as a proper right of passage.

The peanut butter and salami sandwich is iconic over here, but I decided to level up the sandwich with grape jelly: the worst kind of jelly.

My quest for the ingredients of the legendary sandwich starts at Woodman’s. This wasn’t just any average trip to Woodmans, it was midnight on a Wednesday. 

It should be noted that I despise grocery shopping, and the Woodman’s bread aisle might as well be hell.

My indecisive nature had me pondering for much longer than I cared to. What if I did this on a bagel? Does pita pair well with peanut butter?  If I were to get whole wheat, would I hate myself?

As I tossed the basic white bread into my basket, a lady tapped me on my shoulder and asked if she could borrow the shoes on my feet for something important.

The origin story of this particular sandwich was off to a phenomenal start. 

With my shoes still secured to my feet, I retrieved the rest of the necessities and scooted on home.

I stated previously that I made the decision to level up the sandwich, I was lying. In reality, I — very lightly — skimmed over previous EC Eats writings and just assumed there was jelly in the sandwich.

If I would have just paid attention I wouldn’t have to commit to the gross. 

I decided If I’m going to go out like this, I might as well toast the thing. So, I pulled out my garbage toaster. There’s nothing wrong with it, I just got it from a garbage can.

On top of being garbage, the toaster is also broken. 

After a brief maladaptive daydreaming session, out popped the blackened bread. I was in too deep to start over, I also just wanted to go to bed.

I retrieved the chunky peanut butter and spread a thin layer onto the crusty burnt bread.

I went to scoop out some grape jelly, then it landed on my toe. On attempt number two, the jelly made it to the bread. The only problem? I put too much on.

My dad forced me to eat squash when I had the stomach flu once, and now anything resembling a non-solid texture gives me the ick. 

This experience made me wonder what it would look like if grape jelly had feelings. I would imagine that it felt betrayed when I scraped half of the toast jelly into the garbage. What if it felt physical pain?

I guess I’ll never know.

After slapping a few slices of salami onto the abomination, I knew the only thing left to do would be the TikTok knife scrape.

As the knife danced across the bread and made a crusty little jingle, I felt that the time to take a bite was indeed nigh.

The first bite was accented with the taste of burnt bread and cool, cool, grape jelly, of course. 

The salami and peanut butter combination was a savory meets savory experience and the grape jelly, well, it was on the sandwich.

My overall consensus on the sandwich? It wasn’t bad.

This accidental creation of mine was maybe almost kind of worth it. I’m calling it the peanut butter and salami sandwich-with grape jelly.

Ftouhi can be reached at [email protected].