peanut butter

I am happy to report that my Peanut Flour arrived safe and sound this afternoon. I cut the bag open and dipped my finger in to taste it. It has an obviously nutty, but surprisingly sweet flavor. There is a recipe on the side of the bag for “Gluten-Free Fish Fillets” that sounds like it would make bland Tilapia zing to life with incredible flavor.

The National Peanut Board is one of our regular advertisers. They are “a peanut-farmer funded research and commodity board that represents all USA peanut farmers and their families.” Early on they recognized a real synergy between USA grown peanuts and gluten-free diets. Peanuts contain more than 30 essential vitamins and nutrients and peanuts have the most protein of any nut, plus they are naturally gluten-free!

I don’t know about other celiacs, but I wouldn’t survive without peanut products. Peanut Butter on a spoon gives me the energy I need to bust through the urge to nap at 3pm. Peanut butter and honey on toast is my favorite breakfast and salted “blister” peanuts are the best happy hour snack. Peanut Flour is a new ingredient for me. I think my daughter’s peanut butter cookies (aka the peanut butter scones) would have had twice the nutty flavor and twice the protein of rice flour with a ¼ cup of Peanut Flour added to the mix.

The National Peanut Board provided me a Pear & Peanut Butter Smoothie recipe to try out the flour. Several years ago, we did a summer issue featuring smoothies and we had nothing quite this elaborate! This recipe calls for pears, peanut butter, peanut flour, sugar, minced ginger, lemon zest, lemon juice and ice. This is a smoothie that would be wonderful after a big workout at a spa resort with a professional chef and the right ingredients! My Bartlett pear was not ripe enough and my ginger was candied, not minced so if I were a food TV contestant…I would have been “chopped.”

However, I made a second smoothie with pear puree from Trader Joe’s and the smoothie was really good. Then, the kids got into the act and we made a third smoothie…peanut butter, peanut flour, banana, vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. Oh. My. Gosh. It was outrageously good and we are all totally full.

Smoothies for dinner tonight, but I can’t wait to get some fish fillets for some more Peanut Flour experimentation.

This weekend my kitchen was the scene of many experiments. The first was my celiac’s fifth grade science fair project, which involves lots of cups with lots of teeth soaking in different beverages to study the effects on the enamel. As an aside, he keeps asking me where I got the teeth and I told him I have a good friend who is a dentist. In reality, what does the tooth fairy really do with all those teeth? With four kids, I have a macabre collection in my nightstand drawer…six little baby teeth won’t be missed.

The rest of our kitchen experiments included gluten-free mixes or flour and peanut butter. We were hammered with snow on Friday and for some reason, a snow day brings out the bakers in my daughters. My second oldest always wants to make brownies and that is a gluten-free mix I generally have on hand. This time we warmed up some peanut butter and swirled it through the dough before baking. They were gone by Friday night.

On Saturday, my oldest got a recipe for peanut butter cookies off the internet and used gluten-free flour to make peanut butter cookies. Maybe math really isn’t her thing because the “drop by rounded teaspoon on baking sheet” became “drop by hockey puck sized blobs on baking sheet.” They were unattractive at best, but they actually tasted like peanut butter scones. I just had the last one with my morning coffee.

Ironically, I was the one who was supposed to be experimenting with peanut flour, but I think the foul weather delayed the arrival of my peanut flour…so as soon as I get that peanut flour it will be my turn to experiment in the kitchen.