Peanut Butter – A Few Facts and a Recipe

A friend’s FB post reminded us that Tuesday was National Peanut Butter Day.

Since I’m married to the champion of all peanut butter lovers, this post seems appropriate. Seriously, I’ve never seen anyone consume so much peanut butter, though our youngest son offers fierce competition.

It’s rather ironic that hubby loves this so much and I rarely eat it. But I do love parched or boiled peanuts. You can’t get much more Southern than that.

FUN FACTS

In honor of this protein-laden little gem, here are a few facts you may not already know. These come from The National Peanut Board with a few of my thoughts thrown in.

• The peanut probably originated in Peru or Brazil in South America. To back this up, they cite pottery found in those regions decorated with images of peanuts, from as long ago as 3,500 years.
• From there, peanuts took a circuitous route via explorers from Spain. From Spain, traders took them to Asia and Africa. Africans introduced them to North America in the 1700s. Thank you very much!
• Peanuts were first introduced as a cash crop in the 1800s in Virginia. Have you ever seen Virginia peanuts? They are huge! At that time, peanuts were primarily food for livestock and the poor.
• During the Civil War, peanuts became quite popular with the soldiers who took them home.
• Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (yes, of cereal fame) filed a patent for peanut butter in 1895. He very well may have been one of the first well-known WFPB (whole food plant-based) diet champions.
• Peanut butter was first introduced to the public in 1904 at the St. Louis World’s Fair. (Remember the movie based on this fair? I can hear Judy Garland singing Meet Me in St. Louis, The Trolley Song, and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, but no song about peanut butter? Hmmm. By the way, the composer of these songs, Hugh Martin, is a graduate of my Alma Mater, Birmingham-Southern College, though it was The Birmingham Conservatory of Music in his day.)
• Peanut butter fed our troops in both WWI and WWII.
• Today, peanuts rank as our 12^th most valuable crop. Who knew?
• Dr. George Washington Carver’s contributions to the uses for peanuts are numerous. Smithosonian Magazine says it numbers in the hundreds. Everything from shaving cream to paper. His main goal was to provide black farmers with a means of supporting themselves and their families other than that of a cotton sharecropper. Peanuts also provided a tasty way to help feed their families. Carver’s ideas were new and innovative (crop rotation) and are used by farmers all over the world to this day.
• Here in the good old USA, we eat more than 7.9 pounds of peanut butter each year (is this per person? It didn’t say. I can believe it as my hubby can go through a 32 oz. jar in a week. No joke!)

It seems we can’t get enough of our peanuts and peanut butter.

MY PERSONAL CONNECTION TO PEANUTS

On a personal note, I was born in south Alabama. Dothan is the home of my ancestors and the National Peanut Festival. They’ve had a big parade and fair for as long as I can remember.

If you’re ever in the Dothan area,  find one of the local sellers. There are many so, it won’t be hard.

Go eat some peanut butter in your preferred manner. Spread on a plain soda cracker fed us many a snack when I was a child. When our boys were little I spread it on apples and made faces with raisins. Hubby’s snack of choice is still peanut butter on an apple. He makes his own these days, minus the raisin faces.

Better than peanut butter ever thought about being, spend some time in God’s Word. Nourish your soul. Jesus is on every single page! Read John 6: 35-40.

Blessings, y’all!

 

RECIPE

PB Banana Smoothie

Mix together about half a cup of unsweetened Almond Milk (I use the vanilla-flavored one because it tastes better to me).

2 T PB powder or unsweetened PB

Stevia to taste (this is a natural sweetener that doesn’t have all those chemicals, and a little bit goes a long, long way. I order mine from the online biggie, NOW brand, comes in a big jar or a smaller one if you just want to give it a try.)

½ -1  banana (you may leave this out if you’re doing strict keto. It will still be good).

1-2 cups ice cubes.

Blend the first 4 ingredients then add the ice a bit at a time. Blend until smooth and creamy. Enjoy!

 

I’m stretching here but you can’t make a PBnJ without bread. The words to the first chorus say Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven, feed me ’til I want no more. I love this young lady. She’s Welsh and my hubby and I both have quite a bit of Welsh heritage. Indeed, Williams is Welsh. Read the suggested Scripture above to read Jesus talking about the Bread of Heaven.