national peanut butter day
was on 24 jan! why wasn't i informed of this?!?!?! i would have made a killer chocolate peanut butter tart to celebrate (and eventually adding more inches to my burgeoning waistline!)
i never was a huge peanut butter fan up until last year, finally have had enough of joel going on and on about the goodness that is peanut butter. and it definitely lived up to its hype! where have you been all my life?! i did have pb growing up, we both had local and imported pb brands to try- ludy's peanut butter (with so much oil added) and skippy's of course, but just never got into it. well, i guess i wasn't that food obsessed then, and that's whole different story now (which explains the supposedly "unexplained" weight gain).
i have tried a lot of peanut butters, from traditional to all-natural, with added sugar (empty calories, woot woot!) or salt and salt-free, commercial to homemade ones. the ones i like best are natural peanut butters, because you can really taste its nutty goodness. i tried Peanut Butter & Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams. whilst it's good, it doesn't really go well with my frozen (ba)nanas as i couldn't really taste the peanuts. the chocolate tends to completely mask it out... but it is good on bread. i love trader joe's crunchy pb too! times like these when i really want to live in the US!
but our homemade nut butters will suffice for now... we have made 2 batches of peanut butter, following alton brown's recipe. it's pretty darn good, although i find that it needs a heck of a lot of oil to make its consistency spreadable. oh well, i guess we'll have to experiment a lot more to get the right consistency - smooth with a lot of crunchy bits. ack, i really love my peanut butter!! :)
not to mention it's waaay cheaper to make your own than buy them from the stores. a 750g jar of natural peanut butter will set you back around $11.00 when you can get a 3kg bag of raw peanuts for the same amount! it does take a while to roast, remove the skins, process and bottle, but it's not so bad a process and joel and i also get to bond whilst skinning them nuts. hehehe.
i never was a huge peanut butter fan up until last year, finally have had enough of joel going on and on about the goodness that is peanut butter. and it definitely lived up to its hype! where have you been all my life?! i did have pb growing up, we both had local and imported pb brands to try- ludy's peanut butter (with so much oil added) and skippy's of course, but just never got into it. well, i guess i wasn't that food obsessed then, and that's whole different story now (which explains the supposedly "unexplained" weight gain).
i have tried a lot of peanut butters, from traditional to all-natural, with added sugar (empty calories, woot woot!) or salt and salt-free, commercial to homemade ones. the ones i like best are natural peanut butters, because you can really taste its nutty goodness. i tried Peanut Butter & Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams. whilst it's good, it doesn't really go well with my frozen (ba)nanas as i couldn't really taste the peanuts. the chocolate tends to completely mask it out... but it is good on bread. i love trader joe's crunchy pb too! times like these when i really want to live in the US!
but our homemade nut butters will suffice for now... we have made 2 batches of peanut butter, following alton brown's recipe. it's pretty darn good, although i find that it needs a heck of a lot of oil to make its consistency spreadable. oh well, i guess we'll have to experiment a lot more to get the right consistency - smooth with a lot of crunchy bits. ack, i really love my peanut butter!! :)
not to mention it's waaay cheaper to make your own than buy them from the stores. a 750g jar of natural peanut butter will set you back around $11.00 when you can get a 3kg bag of raw peanuts for the same amount! it does take a while to roast, remove the skins, process and bottle, but it's not so bad a process and joel and i also get to bond whilst skinning them nuts. hehehe.