You Put Your Chocolate In My Peanut Butter . . .

. . . meanwhile, this guy collected the crap-ass burnt bits from the bottom of the oven and made a bagel out of it:

As is often the case (Post-its, the microwave), the genesis of the everything bagel was a “fluky-type thing,” [David] Gussin said the other day. When Gussin was fifteen, he took a part-time job at a takeout place in Howard Beach run by a guy named Charlie. It was a simpler time for bagels: you had plain, poppy, sesame, onion, salt, garlic, and — on the exotic end — cinnamon raisin. One of Gussin’s duties at closing time was to sweep up the burnt seeds that had fallen off in the oven during the day. Gussin developed a taste for them, and one afternoon — he guesses around 1980 — “instead of throwing them out, like I always did, I swept them into a bin and said, ‘Charlie, let’s make some with these!’ ”

Charlie, who was mildly enthusiastic about the idea, agreed to sell the newfangled bagels for a nickel extra. According to Gussin, the name “everything” came instantaneously. “There was no marketing meeting or anything like that,” he said. “It was a one-second thought process. Boom.” The flavor became popular “the next day,” and pretty soon Gussin’s brainchild — minus the burnt-seed concept — had spread to a bagel place over in Lindenwood. Within a year, Gussin said, “the everything bagel was everywhere.”