As mentioned in my last blog on cooking, I discovered a recipe for Thai peanut noodles that I love. I ran out of peanut butter while making the noodles. I had some unsalted roasted peanuts on hand.

Necessity is the mother of invention? In my case, necessity is the mother of googling peanut butter recipes. I found this.

http://www.inspiredtaste.net/21318/how-to-make-peanut-butter-three-ways/

I pulled out the food processor and threw in some peanuts with a pinch of salt and a dash of peanut oil. I was thinking that I would have a pleasant adventure and return to buying peanut butter at the grocery. That thought couldn’t have been more wrong.

I went back to prepping the noodles and let the food processor do its thing. After about 5 minutes, the butter started to have a consistency that I recognized. I tasted and added some local wild flower honey. I was shocked at how much flavor the peanut butter had, sans sweetener. A tablespoon of local honey kicked it up to AMAZING.

This discovery piqued my curiosity. Did you look at the link above? Did you see the chocolate peanut butter? Obviously, I had to make some. One idea will adequately express the results of my chocolate peanut butter experiment; I was inventing things to eat with this. I would put it on bananas, strawberries, in hot breakfast cereal, and in peanut butter cookies. You understand why this caused me to gain ten pounds now, yeah?

This is basically Nutella but with peanuts instead of hazelnuts. Speaking of Nutella, I discovered a minor modification for this recipe that makes it even more irresistible. I used hazelnut oil instead of peanut oil. The results are subtle, but it adds just a touch of aromatic hazelnuts that really deepens the flavor. That’s now my standard modification to this recipe.

I struggle to explain why homemade peanut butter is so good. It’s hard to express how much better peanut butter is when you can customize it for your personal tastes. Maybe it’s because there aren’t any perservatives. Maybe it’s because that local honey imparts so many subtle flavors. Maybe it’s because the quality of peanuts that I buy are higher than those that get milled into commercial peanut butter. Maybe it’s simply that I’ve taken 15 minutes to prepare it, and I consume it more mindfully. Maybe it’s the culmination of all of these things that make my own taste so much better. I don’t know. What I do know is that I won’t be buying peanut butter ever again.