Is a Spoonful of Peanut Butter an Acceptable Meal?

As a kid, and adolescent, a spoonful of peanut butter was all I needed as a quick snack between meals. It's protein after all, and though it is high in fat, it is good fat, right?

I am acutely aware that my eating habits have become less predictable since being unemployed. I'm on the computer all day (and I literally mean all day) job searching, writing, blogging, looking for ways to stop my Siamese from vomiting, reading self-help blogs to keep myself from committing hara-kiri (although the traditional samurai way requires a formal ceremony and I don't have the time to carry that out, and it makes a mess), etc. With all of this on-line time, my meals have become a strange curiosity.

Breakfast is really the only true "meal" I eat during the day, and it usually consists of a slice of over-toasted Ezekiel bread (made from sprouts, not flour) with peanut butter, and half of a banana, washed down with a Diet Coke. That is it until I start getting hungry around noon, and then I opt for a tablespoon of peanut butter and another Diet Coke. Pat, the boyfriend, has a huge issue with my disgusting Diet Coke habit, and we are working on (though admittedly, I'm not putting too much effort into the "working on it" part).

Lunch doesn't really exist at my house anymore. That spoonful of peanut butter is it until dinner. Now, if Pat is here, we usually cook something very healthy (he is a vegetarian, unless bacon is involved, then he changes the label to "flexitarian" to allow for pork product consumption). If Pat isn't here...yup, a spoonful of peanut butter will suffice for dinner, but with a glass of milk instead of another Diet Coke.

I would blame it on being lazy, but I'm not lazy. I'm up at 5 am most mornings for a workout, then I run at least 2 miles in the afternoon a few times during the week, so I can't really say I'm lazy. In my twenties, instead of a spoon of peanut butter for dinner, I would eat a bowl of cereal, usually Coca Krispies or Captain Crunch (but I got tired of the roof of my mouth being mangled by the Captain Crunch, so I only had that on special occasions). I think I'm somehow reverting back to my twenty-something bad habits, and I'm not sure why. I don't think my unemployed status is the true cause. What if the internet is actually subtly sucking my brains (and everyone else's) out and filing all of my knowledge (or lack of) into this huge cyberspace library, which is being compiled for posterity? Oh God, I have to get a job soon or I'm going to lose it, really.

By the way, I found this great article on why people love peanut butter:

Top 10 Reasons Americans Really Love Peanut Butter
When I think peanut butter, here's what I think of.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/440092/top_10_reasons_americans_really_love.html

--Fortuitous Observer