One of the few pieces of information I permanently retained from high school is something I learned in Environmental Science in the 11th grade: the fact that the FDA allows certain amounts of non-food “bits” into all of our food. One of the grosser examples happens to be my beloved peanut butter. I won’t go into too great amount of detail because it’s disgusting, but you can read it straight from the source here: FDA Approved Food Defect Levels. You can just scroll down the list of foods at the end of the document and discover all the gory details. I read an article that essentially says “Don’t worry! Eating bugs in your peanut butter is good for you!” I don’t know about you, but if I ever decide to eat a bug, I would like to actually know about it when I’m doing so. I don’t want bugs. I just want peanut butter. So I’ve taken matters into my own hands.

This has led me on a quest to make the perfect nut butter, a quest that was much shorter and easier than I ever expected. Nuts naturally release oil when they are processed, and so nut butter literally makes itself. So awesome.

When I went to the local farmer’s market this weekend, there were lots of peanut farmers there. I decided to buy a bag of unshelled peanuts for the purpose of making this butter. I prefer unshelled because 1. you can weed out the “bad” peanuts yourself 2. you can keep some of the skins, which add a great flavor to the butter. Plus, they’re local! Which is always a good thing.

Besides, shelling nuts is kind of therapeutic.

No bugs here.

Here’s the ridiculously easy recipe that I have come to after a few experiments.

Simply Peanut Butter:

• 1 1/2 cups shelled peanuts
• 1 t. sugar
• 1/2 t. salt (if the nuts are unsalted)

-Place ingredients in a food processor, and let ‘er rip!

It will start like this:

Then look like this:

And end up like this:

It’s a little closer to nature, and it tastes delicious.

Thanks for reading!