So Trashy: Raenelle vs Betty Sue on Peanuts and Pepsi

A few days ago, Lee Zalben over at Serious Eats ran the piece Ever Tried Peanuts in Coke? Well, obviously, yes. But memories of my own youth in the American heartland aren't what popped to mind when I read it. No, what sprung to mind immediately was a little side note about Raenelle and Betty Sue over a high calorie pick-me-up in Ernest Matthew Mickler's classic White Trash Cooking.

LOW CALORIE PICK-ME-UP

I glass skim milk

1 envelope sugar substitute

Blend in blender until foamy, then add 1 teaspoon McCormick's vanilla extract.

Try this on hot days when your cardboard Good-Shepherd fan makes you even hotter.

Betty Sue says: "This is a life-saver before Sunday dinner and just after church, when it's so hot you cain't hardly stand it!"

Essentially an old-school milk shake from back when they were simply milk, shaken. The sugar substitute, though, knocks it over into the realm of the vile. If you think so, too, perhaps something with a little more substance is your speed...

HIGH CALORIE PICK-ME-UP
Pour a small bag of Tom's peanuts into a cold Pepsi. Turn it up and eat and drink at the same time.

Raenelle told me that this was one of Betty Sue's concoctions. She said: “But it's so trashy she won't own up to it!"

Goes well with:

• Check out Possum Up a Guava Tree, an earlier piece in which I give one of the recipes from Mickler's book for...well, something that goes with sweet potatoes.
• I said it before but it's worth repeating: It’s all well and good to joke about white trash (the Blue Collar comics bank on it), but don’t dismiss Mickler’s book as sheer kitsch or merely a goof, though it is in part both those things. John T. Edge makes an eloquent case for Mickler as an intellectual, if not actual, peer of James Agee and photographer Walker Evans in his 2006 Oxford American article Let Us Now Praise Fabulous Cooks.