Making Peanut Butter

We eat peanut butter pretty much every day.  The kids love peanut butter and jam sandwiches, we put it in our smoothies, and we even put it on top of ice cream :)  Its pretty much a staple in this house and without it, I would have some pretty disappointed boys. 

I had a recipe for peanut butter... its pretty complicated:

-3 cups peanuts
-blend in a food processer

So, I thought we would show the kids where peanut butter comes from since they are such large consumers of the product.  I bought a bag of dry roasted peanuts for the kids to shell (I wish we had peanut farms around here)  They kept asking "how many more do I have to peel?"  and I said... wow, its  a lot of work to make peanut butter... Blake says "yeah, it is easier to buy it at Costco"  Little stinker!

It was messy... all over the floor, but the dog helped with that :)

So we de-shelled the peanuts, and added them to the blender, and then we added some of the special home grown honey that we have from Kyle's Great Grandpa for some sweetness :)

Flipped the blender on high, and let it go... now, it turned out great, but it was thicker then I had expected.  It turns out that you shouldn't use dry roasted peanuts.  They are missing some of the oil that you need to make it really creamy (thank you Bing) it has almost a frosting texture, but still tastes amazing!!  Luke was eating it out of the jar this morning saying that it was "delicious"

There is 3 different types of hydrogenated oils in Skippy peanut butter... why do they have to put that nasty stuff in something that all our kids eat when its naturally good all by itself?  

Afterwards, there was a bunch of peanut butter stuck to the bottom of the blender that looked like a pain to get out, so we added some milk, ice and chocolate, and made a milkshake :)  It was a good lesson for the kids, and I think I am going to always make my own peanut butter from now on.  It was easy, the kids love it, I know what's in it, and it was cheaper... oh, and there was a little education involved :)