Protect and Serve

Peanut butter is a food that Tamalehawk will eat on his way to the grave. Lapping it up, heaping featherfuls, dipping his beak straight into the jar with a wild look in his eyes. It's the rare food that comes close to perfect in its commercially available form - a uniformly velvet viscosity, the luxury of creamy or chunky, edible in sandwich form, and packing a potent protein-punch to the solar plexus.

Whether it's a surreptitious swipe at night or a formal post-meal dollop, peanut butter always manages to spackle the hunger void shut. Tamalehawk learned a secret trick from an old condor friend: Add two tablespoons of peanut butter to your ramen noodles with the sodium-flavored packet, then crack an egg right in the water and swirl it around. Split the resulting mass of noodles with your friend and laugh confidently, knowing that the meal you just made cost you about twelve cents and is guaranteed to last a long day of perching.