DIY Adventure

The other day, I made my own chocolate syrup. I found a great recipe on Pinterest (and by found, I mean I stole repinned the recipe from my friend, Henna). The finished product tasted so much better than store bought syrup and it really could not have been easier. My husband LOVED it, I LOVED it. It was a win. Riding the wave of my DIY victory, I pushed forward to tackle another recipe idea from Pinterest: Honey Roasted Peanut Butter.

One of my favorite things to do at Whole Foods is hit up the peanut butter grinding machines for freshly ground honey roasted peanut butter. It seriously may be one of the most delicious things on this planet. My only problem is Whole Foods is not located all that close to our house, so I don't get there very often. This recipe I found seemed to solve my pesky little problem by bringing the delicious directly to our kitchen. I roasted the peanuts in the oven, threw them into my trusty food processor with some honey, pressed the "on" button and waited for the magic to happen as the recipe promised. In a few minutes, these little peanuts would transform into peanut butter.

It didn't matter that I had to wear ear plugs because my beloved Cuisinart is so loud and high pitched it could cause early hearing loss. My excitement could barely be contained! I was told to expect the process to take a few minutes and one thing I have is patience. Patience did no good. The magic did NOT happen. The peanuts grinded to a paste and remained a paste. Eventually I added some oil to the mix to help the texture and the paste did turn into a more liquid, edible version of itself. While it is pretty tasty, it does not reach my peanut butter standards. My DIY peanut butter was a failure. I will NOT be attempting this again. Lesson learned: purchasing my peanut butter is the way to go.

How fortunate for me that a few days later, a delivery arrived with THIS:

Heavenly!

THIS is giving my favorite freshly ground honey roasted peanut butter some serious competition! I heard about Wild Squirrel Nut Butter and I knew I had to try it. Wild Squirrel Nut Butter is an Oregon based company created by two creative young ladies. They started making peanut butter while they were roommates at the University of Oregon and they have turned their snack session into a successful business. I really enjoy that.  

I ordered a variety pack to sample four of their five flavors from OpenSky.* Honey Pretzel is the first to be opened. I love to dip pretzels in peanut butter as a snack. This peanut butter does all of the work for me. You don't even need to put it on anything, just eat it directly off of the spoon! Wild Squirrel Nut Butter is definitely a company to check out. They have a variety pack with all 5 of their flavors on their web site or you can check out the deal I got below. When you open the box, be prepared to feel like a kid in a candy shop!

*OpenSky is a shopping site that offers deals on a variety of products including food, clothing and beauty products.  Curators (some celebrity, some not) offer these deals after they have tried a product and and given it a positive review.  I have placed a few orders through the site because their gift sets were discounted from the full price of the products.  I like really like it and they have terrific customer service.  (Easy returns and when an order was going to be shipped later than expected, they automatically gave me a merchandise credit to apologize.)  If you would like to check it out, they give you free shipping and $10 toward your first purchase.  Pretty sweet deal.  Why not use that credit to get your own variety pack?  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some peanut butter to eat!