Armstrong Peanut Butter

I've finally graduated to the grandpa of peanut-butters. You know the kind. Non-homogenized. No salt, no sugar, no additives. Just peanuts. I shuddered at the thought of switching, remembering the jar that sits in dad's cupboard. There's always that golden layer of oil waiting to be stirred back in. Heaven help you if you don't; you are left with peanut-butter plumber's putty on the bottom of the jar, unspreadable.

So anyways, I've graduated to the grandma club and now I've switched. That sugar and salt is no good for us. I thought I'd forestall the oily layer by keeping my PB in the fridge, but it is too hard to spread except on the toughest of toast. Hubby moved it to the cupboard, then hid his homogenized version to keep me from "borrowing". I'm back to facing that oily layer. So heave ho with some heavy wrist action and a blur of speed, as I convince the oil to reunite with it's nutty brothers.

As I stir vigorously, my mind wanders to comforting places. I wonder how many calories I'm burning. Then I remember dad's peanut butter jar, always there. And my mind wanders back to the memory of an older tin that grandpa found in a corner of the old cellar of the family farmstead. Grandpa laughed at that. How he used to look forward to his peanut butter, a delicacy.

Peanut Butter has a venerable history. It got it's launch as an alternative cash crop for southern farmers, and it was touted as a health food. http://www.foodreference.com/html/art-peanut-butter.html

But for me, my daily vigorous stir of some gritty peanut-butter transports me to an old farmstead grown over with lush weeds with my grandfather's comforting rumble in the background as he tells us stories of growing up in Renfrew, Ontario.

I am borrowing the picture from a fellow blogger, Lucia Andres, of http://yummygalore.blogspot.com/