A fun experiment for a rainy day

A few weeks ago, we made a trip to the Mennonite dry goods store, as I was running low on some spices and seasonings, as well as unbleached flour.  I LOVE visiting their store.  It's out in the country in the middle of no where, and they have just about everything.  They even had some WI cheese on hand this time, and we stocked up our fridge with some.   I asked if they had peanut butter, as I didn't see any on the shelves.  The nice girl informed me that if I picked out what kind of peanuts I wanted, they would make some fresh.  I couldn't resist, and we had never seen homemade peanut butter being made before.  It was as simple as dumping it into the machine and out came the creamy peanut butter.  How neat, I thought "I need to get me one of those". 

A few days later it was a rainy Saturday and I decided to look online and see if I could possibly find myself a peanut butter machine.  As I was doing so, I stumbled upon an old antique one and I couldn't believe it.  I HAD one of these, way in the back of my pantry.  My grandma gave it to me many years ago and we used it to grind up meats for sandwiches, and I never knew I could use it for peanuts.  We HAD to try it out immediately :)  Thank goodness I had a large bag of peanuts from Sam's club in the back of my pantry, that had been there for quite a while.  The kids started shelling the peanuts, while I washed and put together the old grinder.

It was a messy, but fun job for the kids.  They all took their turn dumping the peanuts into the grinder and then turning the handle. 

It took the nuts a couple of times through the grinder before they became smooth.   We then dumped them into a large bowl and I used my blender to get the texture I was looking for.  I couldn't give an exact recipe, as we were just experiementing and dumping ingredients in as we saw fit.  I did sweeten with lots of honey, a bit of sugar, and a tiny bit of salt, and a splash of water.  That's as exact as my recipe can get. 

 

 

When we were finished we all tasted it and agreed it was good, but different then we were use to.  The kids did have it on their toast the next morning at breakfast.  After about a week of the peanut butter sitting in the pantry, I realized the kids weren't going to eat it plain, so my oldest daughter made up some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, using our homemade peanut butter.  They were delicious!

 

 

In the end, it was a fun experiment for a rainy day and yes, I would try it again.  I am going to do a little more research before I attempt it again and try to get a more exact recipe.  With the cost of peanut butter these days it's definitely worth it and the kids have fun making it!

 

♥  Shannon