Focusing

For those of you who might be confused over the title of this post, at least 1 of 2 things are true.
1. You do not know how hard it is to find peanut butter overseas
2. You do not know how my wife loooooves her peanut butter

Of all the sacrifices it is to live in Brazil, perhaps none has been as great for Marla as living without peanut butter. They do have peanuts here in Brazil, but people here haven’t developed the taste for peanut butter so it is almost impossible to find. And when you do find it the in the import section of some supermarkets, the jars are small and so ridiculously expensive that we’ve never bought it. So until recently, the gift of good peanut butter was something only a visitor could bring.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I did try to make some. I’d first buy the peanuts, then I’d roast them. After roasting them in the oven, I’d take each one of those red papery skin things off of each peanut. Then I’d roast them again. After their second roasting, I’d put them in a mini-food processor and blend them up adding oil and salt. The process took about 2 hours to yield about 2 cups of peanut butter.

But then about a month ago, I saw in a health food store dry, roasted, salted peanuts, without the little red skins. Oh my goodness, how my heart jumped. Not only did this store have salted peanuts, but they had unsalted as well. Sooooo after trial and error, I have discovered that 1.3 kilos of unsalted peanuts (that I have to roast again) + .7 kilos of salted peanuts + a cuisanart + about 40 minutes of work yields almost 5 pounds of delicious peanut butter for about the same price as you can buy it at Cosco! Oh how God is good, and life can go on!