Monday, September 24, 2007

make it yourself #1

Don’t be too scared - it’s peanut butter - hee!

We can no longer find any supermarket peanut butter brands NOT made in China so I ventured to our gold-plated, heart-attack inducing organics shop....sure enough - the organic made in NZ peanut butter was twice the price of the supermarket stuff and in a smaller jar. Sheesh.

It seems very unfair to me that only rich (or at least upper-middle-class) people can feed their families organic food in NZ. We get the occasional organic thing, but there is no way we could afford to go 100% organic - at the moment we are approximately 10% organic and most of that comes from our garden. No wonder there is so much type two diabetes and obesity in NZ when it’s cheaper to buy bulk mince pies, cocoa cola and fish and chips than vegetables, organic diary products and whole foods. (Err - that’s not what WE buy, I hasten to add, but I see a lot of trolleys at Pak’n’Save full of that kinda stuff.)

Anyway - back to the peanut butter - I noticed that I could get 500g of organic peanuts for less than one 250g jar of organic peanut butter - so I did that and had a go at making my own peanut butter. I roasted the nuts, then pulverised them in my food processor - they needed a little oil to turn into ‘butter’ - before I added the quarter cup of oil - it was more like fine crumbs.

Anyway - I was please with the result - it’s darker than supermarket peanut butter, the flavour is more intensely nutty and it has a weird-at-first, then addictive mealy texture. I’m hooked! I got two jars for just under $5, which works out about the same as supermarket peanut butter.

If anyone has any peanut butter making tips or thoughts, I’d love to hear them!

I use Brent’s coffee grinder—don’t tell him teehee. I also do almonds and brazil nuts yum! Oh and was thinking of making some seed butter as well. Yum! Love pipX

Thanks for that great idea Helen I’ve been freaking out a bit about store bought food lately, I’m definatley going to give that a try. I like the idea of using other nuts too. In a few years my hazel nut tree might give me enough nuts.

I have a tip.  When I lived in Australia I used to buy my peanut butter from the local health shop which would pulverise it right in front of you.  They used raw peanuts instead of roasted and did the first round of processing in small batches then the second round in one big batch.

yum. I’m lazy and have been buying the exorbitant organic stuff. I’ve been eating peanut butter out the jar since I was a small child. I remember my father berating me for such uncouth behaviour (nicely, he’s a nice dad).

At the Binn Inn you can make your own peanut butter in their nut mincer and the nuts are from India (this is better? not sure). So much better to make your own - you’re the peanut butter queen, but handy to know if you need pb right now!

(when Sage first saw the picture before I told him what it he was very suspicious. You can imagine right?0

i totally agree with the organic being very much an upper class thing, it’s so expensive and we do as much as we can.  Thanks for the peanut butter idea.. I have always wanted to try it.

-kimberlee

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