Peanut Butter On My…

Column by Jolene Thym

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If you are one of the few people who doubt that peanut butter and chocolate were made for each other, I challenge you to check out the most recent evidence on the subject — delicate, delicious morsels of chocolate-wrapped peanut butter made by Coco-luxe Confections in San Francisco.
The company’s Peanut Butter Bites are, in my opinion, what a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup aspires to be. They’re creamy and rich, and sprinkled with roasted peanuts and coarse sea salt.

For those who love peanut butter and milk chocolate together, they are squares of perfection. The only problem with these delicious little bites is that since they are made of fresh, high quality ingredients, you can’t leave them sitting around for months and expect them to taste great. They’re also expensive, at $17.95 for a box of nine chocolates.

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(CBS4 News) MIAMI

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6 to 8 servings
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2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 pounds beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch chunks
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cups water
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 can (4.5 ounces) chopped green chilies, drained
1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup creamy peanut butter
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In a large soup pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the beef and onions; stir until the beef is browned. Add the water, tomatoes, green chilies, ground red pepper, and salt. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 1-1/2 hours, or until the beef is tender. In a small bowl, combine the peanut butter with 1 cup stew juices, slowly stirring in the juices. Stir peanut butter mixture into the stew and simmer for 2 minutes, or until heated through.
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SERVING SUGGESTION: Serve this over a bed of hot cooked rice to enjoy every last bit of flavor.

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Jan Houghtaling of Newago, Grand Rapids Press

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1 large egg

2 slices sandwich bread

2 tablespoons peanut butter (crunchy or creamy)

Mayonnaise for spreading

PREPARATION: Heat a non-stick skillet at medium heat until just hot enough to sizzle a drop of water. Gently slip egg into the skillet. Reduce heat to low. Cook slowly until whites are completely set and yolk begins to thicken but is not hard (turning eggs gently to cook both sides).

Spread the peanut butter on 1 side of 1 slice of bread. Spread the mayonnaise on 1 side of the remaining slice. Lay the fried egg on the peanut butter and top with the other slice of bread, mayonnaise side down.

Nutrition information per sandwich: 449 calories, 30 grams fat, 18 grams protein, 29 grams carbohydrate, 4 grams fiber, 215 milligrams cholesterol, 549 milligrams sodium.

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By Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Who knew that the little town of New Bethlehem, Clarion County, holds the Smucker’s peanut butter factory? Who knew it holds the Peanut Butter Festival?

Festival chairman Harry Kehr answered the first question with, “If they live in New Bethlehem they do. If they live in Clarion, which is 18 miles away, they don’t. Which is amazing.”

In this borough of 1,700, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, the peanut butter plant is one of the biggest employers, with 50-plus workers. And yes, Mr. Kehr said, you can smell it when the peanuts are roasting, which is just about every day.

The word of the festival hasn’t carried very far, he said, in part because the J.M. Smucker Co. is extremely low profile.

Indeed, the Orrville, Ohio-based company doesn’t send out news releases for the event, which a spokeswoman made clear the company does not sponsor.

The factory allows no public tours and isn’t even marked by big signs. But the local operation is one of several sponsors and a most supportive one, said Mr. Kehr, of the Chamber of Commerce, which has organized the annual festival since 1996.

This year’s runs tomorrow through Sunday and looks to be nuttier than ever.
The natural peanut butter factory actually was founded in 1946 as the H.B. DeViney Co. in the former New Bethlehem Brewing Co. It became a Smucker subsidiary in 1965 and now produces all the natural peanut butter products under the Smucker’s, Laura Scudder’s, Adam’s and Santa Cruz Organic labels (but not Jif, America’s best-selling brand, which Smucker now owns, too).

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Al Sicherman, Star Tribune

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Dark-roast peanut butter

Organic grocery products is not a category in which we expect to see new flavor choices, but that’s what we have from Santa Cruz, which offers light- and dark-roasted organic peanut butter — in both creamy and crunchy, of course.

Find Santa Cruz products (a Smucker’s brand) at Whole Foods, co-ops and some mainstream supermarkets and health-food stores. But don’t bother if you don’t want to stir and refrigerate your peanut butter — or if you favor saltiness or sweetness therein. Both versions have 50 milligrams of sodium and 1 gram of sugar per 2-tablespoon serving; typical supermarket peanut butter has three times as much of each.

Not cracker fantasy

Two no-nonsense cracker variants caught Mr. Tidbit’s eye this week: Keebler’s Town House Toppers are Town House crackers (slightly reformulated), with a raised rim to keep toppings in place (or, as the package puts it, “designed to simplify your topping experience”). Choose garlic & herb or Mr. Tidbit’s perennial flavor favorite, original.

And there’s a new flavor of Triscuits, cracked pepper & olive oil — and they actually taste like pepper and olive oil!

Flavored sparkling cider

Although the previous item might not suggest it, Mr. Tidbit usually is unmoved by new products that are the 17th new flavor of an existing product. But the first departure from “original” of something as basic as sparkling apple cider — especially if it’s from what is said to be Minnesota’s largest apple orchard — probably is worth mentioning. So:

Pepin Heights now offers raspberry and black cherry versions of its 100-percent-juice, no-added-sugar sparkling apple cider. (They do that by mixing apple juice from concentrate, raspberry or black-cherry concentrate and carbonated water.)

AL SICHERMAN

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