When looking for inspiration for this column, I often consult lists of food holidays. I’m ambivalent about these holidays. On the down side, many of them were invented to serve corporate interests. On the plus side, new holidays are always fun to celebrate.

I recently learned that tomorrow, April 2, is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Like most American children, I grew up eating a lot of peanut butter and was happy to do so. (I wasn’t a big fan of adding jelly or jam to it; that seemed to me a bit excessive.)

When I was 7, my family took me overseas for the first time. I adored Paris and French food … at first. After about a week, however, culinary Phillistine that I was, I began to long for the flavors of home.

When one evening I was offered yet another bowl of potage (a delicious thick French soup), I burst into tears. “I don’t want potage!” I cried. “All I want is Campbell’s pepper-pot soup and a peanut-butter sandwich!”

I was stuck with the potage for the moment. The Campbell company had not yet arrived in France. And peanut butter was viewed as a bizarre American aberration.

When I was 20-ish I worked in Paris with my American godmother, Dagny Johnson, on a summer film festival. Dody, as we called her, loved French food but was unwilling to give up many beloved American edibles. She routinely sent me to a place called Le Drugstore to stock up on PB.

Le Drugstore, which the Los Angeles Times called a “cavalcade of Americana,” was opened in 1958 by a French advertising executive who had spent time in the United States, where he became enamored of the open-all-night, buy-anything-you-like spirit of drugstores in New York.

Peanut butter was available at the French emporium … at an astronomical price. My godmother believed it was worth that price. Le Drugstore probably had Campbell’s soup as well; I didn’t think to ask.

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Dody was not the only person of her generation who adored peanut butter. According to the New York Times, famed American conservative William F. Buckley Jr. couldn’t get enough of the stuff. He published this brief poem in his publication, “National Review”:

I know that I shall never see
A poem lovely as Skippy’s peanut butter.

When he was first married, he told his wife she was required to serve the stuff to him every day for breakfast. She must have been good-natured. They remained married, with peanut butter sealing their bond, until she died almost 60 years later.

Buckley had grown up eating PB daily. When he was in boarding school in England, every two weeks he received a care package from home: a case of grapefruit and a large jar of peanut butter. His school friends adored the grapefruit but had no use for the peanut butter.

“No wonder they needed American help to win the war,” he later quipped.

To me, adding jelly or jam to peanut butter came later in life. (I’m not sure that it ever came to Buckley.) I spent a month as a teenager at a girl’s summer camp in Vermont. Everyone there ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch. (This was before peanut allergies were taken into consideration.)

I adored them as well, although if I consume peanut butter as an adult it’s usually without jam or jelly. (An apple with peanut butter has become one of my favorite breakfasts.) Nevertheless, to celebrate PB and J Day this week, I am willing to add J once more.

So … let me introduce Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies.

These were beyond simple to make. I just prepared my favorite peanut-butter cookie dough (from “Fannie Farmer,” my culinary bible) and put little dabs of jam in the middle of each cookie.

The combination was simple yet satisfying. The jam (yes, you could use jelly, but jam has so much more flavor) really pops in contrast to the peanut cookies.

Happy PB and J Day!

I halved this recipe; I was taking the cookies to a small meeting.

Ingredients:

1 cup sweet butter at room temperature

1 cup peanut butter (I used crunchy because that’s what I keep in the house, but creamy would be acceptable.)

1 cup sugar, plus more sugar later for rolling

1 cup brown sugar, packed a bit

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 cups flour

jam as needed (I think I used about 1 cup for half a recipe. I had strawberry-rhubarb in the house, which set off the peanut butter nicely.)

Instructions:

In the bowl of mixer, cream together the butter and the peanut butter. Beat in the sugars, followed by the eggs, 1 at a time.

Beat in the salt and baking powder. Stir in the flour, followed by the vanilla.

Chill the cookie dough tor a couple of hours. This will help it stay firm when it is shaped into cookies.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a couple of cookie sheets or line them with parchment or silicone.

Shape the dough into balls about 1-1/4 inches in diameter. Roll the balls in sugar and place them on the prepared cookie sheets. With a fork, make the traditional crisscross design on each cookie. Then use a finger to make small indentations in the center of the cookies.

Bake the cookies for 9 to 10 minutes. Let them sit for a while on the sheets to firm up before transferring them to a rack.

Makes about 36 cookies.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.