Making Peanut Butter

Bread and peanut butter are sure and steadfast staples around our house.  Our supply had been depleted for several days already, so I decided to make some yesterday....then realized it was a great opportunity to make good on my promise of pictures!

The stars of the show: fresh, sorted.....let me just insert a little note here: Basically, EVERY dry food item has to be sorted or sifted here before you use it: Flour? sift out the bugs.  Beans? pick out the stones and the bad beans. Cornmeal? sift out the meal worms and bugs.  Sugar?  get a spoon and pick out the ants.  Peanuts?  Sort out the bad ones.  The past weeks I have even had to carefully pick bugs out of the oats every time I need to use them. 

ahem...anyway, fresh, sorted, unroasted peanuts.

They are grilled in a large pot over the charcoal (no oil, for those who are wondering).

(Next to them, by the way, are the beans for lunch, which the girls were preparing.)

Once they start popping and darken in color, they are about ready.

After they are all roasted, you have to rub them in your hands until all of skins come off.

Once you have the skins off, you can toss them and let the wind take the chaff away (isn't there a word for this process in English?  I can't think of it).

I'm not quite a pro yet....probably lost a few more peanuts than I should have...but the chickens were happy.

After that, you have to sort them AGAIN, picking out the bad ones you missed or the good ones you burned,  and sifting out the germ, which apparently makes the peanut butter bitter, not better (ha! shout out to Betty and her butter! what what!).

The beautiful batch that's left is then carried up the way a few yards to a house with a grinder.  After setting up the grinder rustic style, the peanuts are put in that hopper at the top. 

Then, you hand crank away (this is how we go to the gym).

I'm not cranking as enthusiastically as it looks...it was actually just really windy.

What goes into our peanut butter?  Peanuts, salt, and hot pepper.   Wait, hot pepper?  Yep.  We make ours mild, since there are people in the house who don't like it too spicy (you know who you are!).

Golden, natural, delicious.

So there it is.  Seem time consuming?  um, yeah, but most things are when the grocery store is 5 hours away. (It's certainly not done in a Jiffy...get it? ha!)  Luckily, I actually enjoy pioneer era-type activities.

It reminds me of the time my neighbor came home while I was sitting on my porch in Lancaster city shelling lima beans that I had grown in my little garden plot behind a local church (seems completely normal to me).  He seemed to walk by every time I was engaged in this or a similar activity.  He gave me one long, puzzled glance and said as he mounted the porch steps, 

"You have the strangest hobbies."  

Well, I kind of thought that his under-age partying and pot-growing habits were strange hobbies, so it's no wonder we didn't understand each other.  

Obviously, he didn't grow up shelling buckets of peas on his Nana's porch.

This photo was taken in February.  It was raining over our heads, but the sun was bursting through the clouds to the northwest.

Just one of many beautiful skyscapes to which I often am privy. 

hmmmm....I seem to be failing as a dedicated blogger, as well as in my resolution to take more pictures to give you all a porthole view into my world.  sigh

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Passion fruit mango muesli anyone?

Being rather jealous of all my beloved Lancastrians enjoying their farm fresh produce (salad, berries, kale, sweet peppers, salad, tomatoes, apples, green beans, salad...), I've decided to look at the positive (and make YOU jealous) and show off some of the great things that I get to enjoy.

acerola cherry passion fruit juice

Delicious and packed with Vitamin C

OR how about watermelon key lime juice.

Refreshing AND geometrical

And what are these ginormous globules?

 

Those would be huge papayas. 

 Chock full of nutrition...a digestive aid, more Vitamin C than citrus, and naturally medicinal. 

And can anyone tell me what this is?

....you probably eat them...

...they're kinda expensive...

...but good for your heart....

...guessed yet?

It's an almond.  But the nut that you know is actually inside this little baby.   And let me tell you, for as hard as they are to get out of there, I can understand why they're expensive!  But we often don't eat the nut.  We actually eat that red flesh that's on the outside.  It tastes kind of like a less sweet plum.  But if you get one that's not ripe yet, watch out!  Talk about bitter.  

And what about this?  One of my favorites.  It's called kachima (pronounced kah-shi-ma) in Creole.  No idea what it is in English.  You pull it apart, and eat the flesh inside, spitting out the seeds.  There's a tree out behind the Lemuel house.

And this?!  It looks kind of ugly, but it is one of the most delicious.  It's calledkowosòl in Creole, and I'm pretty sure you may recognize it as guanabana, if you are apt to wander into the Goya aisle at the grocery store.  MMmmm, again, you peel it and eat the pulp, spitting out the seeds (and then planting them!).

And all of it is naturally organic!  Of course, the downside is that it is seasonally restricted.

How about Malta?  

I totally remember NOT liking it the first time I had it, but now I crave it.  It's made from the hops left over after making beer. Packed with B vitamins.

And of course, we could never forget the moringa tree, a.k.a., The Miracle Tree. (Check out http://www.ilovemoringa.com/).  In our area, the leaves are usually eaten cooked in with other foods.  However, I have tried them raw in salads.  I've also made tea from the flowers.  The tea has a delicious, light, grassy flavor, and is used in some places to treat symptoms of the common cold (just like, hibiscus, which we also have in abundance, by the way).