Throwback Thursday Canna-Recipe: Fire Ants on a Log

You may not realize it, but Ants on a Log are a pretty big deal. National Ants on a Log Day comes and goes every year on the second Tuesday in September. Maybe you celebrate it and maybe you don’t, but the point is that it happens. Every year, as summer turns to fall, my favorite childhood snack gets its day in the sun. Does your favorite snack get a national holiday? Heck. Probably. There’s a holiday for everything these days.

This year, National Ants on a Log Day falls on the same day as National Date-Nut Bread Day and a little known holiday called Pardon Day. Pardon Day is a yearly reminder to practice your manners and ask for forgiveness. If September 8th isn’t the most wholesome day of the year, I’m really not sure what day would qualify. It definitely would not be Felt Hat Day, the day in late september when men traditionally put away their felt hats. That day sounds like trouble.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “But who invented this amazing snack that has its own national holiday?”

Good question. While there’s no definitive answer, there are some clues that give most of the credit to the Girl Scout organization. So you can bet there’s at least one frustrated retired troop leader out there grinding her teeth every time she hears the phrase thinking, “I’m the one who came up with that and those snot nosed girl scouts get all the credit.”

But the history of Ants on a Log didn’t start there. It wasn’t like a bunch of girl scouts were just sitting around a fire and boom! Raisins just landed on peanut butter that landed on celery and someone yelled “It’s like they’re ants sitting on a log!”. I mean, maybe that’s how it happened, but if we really want to obsessively find out where Ants on a Log came from, we’re going to need to go a bit deeper.

First off, there was a time when peanut butter didn’t exist. You heard me right. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the big PB showed up on the food scene. In 1890, a doctor came up with the idea of packaging peanut paste for people with bad teeth.

As a matter of fact, peanut butter wasn’t used as a filling for vegetables until sometime in the 1960’s. This is probably when a drunk desperate housewife, trying to cry for help, put peanut butter on celery and served it during a dinner with her husband’s boss. She probably just couldn’t care less what anyone thought of her anymore, and as she cried while making those appetizers, she spitefully slathered on that peanut butter and hoped her husband would either finally get the guts to leave her or see how bad things had gotten and ask her how she felt for once. But then, his boss unexpectedly loved the finger food and a new trend in appetizers was born. We can really only guess.

We might never know how Ants on a Log actually came to be. But we can take the next step in the evolution of this food by adding cannabis to the mix. These Fire Ants on a Log are a simple five minute edible recipe that will have you thinking back to the good old days.