Peanut Butter

When most people think of peanut butter, they think of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that everyone ate as kids. While peanut butter is definitely not haute cuisine, gourmet peanut butter can and does exist. I recently discovered a company, Peanut Butter & Co that does gourmet peanut butter. I like peanut butter but I don't eat it often enough to warrant buying any. When I think about eating peanut butter, I think of peanut butter sandwiches- which I am not a huge fan of; peanut butter cookies which I like but I don't bake; Thai food, and Elvis burgers (peanut butter and bacon). While all of this is good, it would require a lot of preparation and planning to use even one jar of peanut butter. While I could probably manage to eat one jar of peanut butter, Peanut Butter & Company makes more than one type of peanut butter. In fact, they make 8 types of peanut butter which is something that I know that I couldn't do. I really wanted to try this but knowing I couldn't eat this much peanut butter, I had to come up with a plan. My little sister likes peanut butter and has kids so I thought that I might send some to them. I sent her a package of the six most popular peanut butters with the understanding that they could eat as much as they wanted as long as she saved a little of each for me. In addition to the standard smooth and crunchy, they also include white chocolate, dark chocolate, cinnamon raisin, and red pepper peanut butters in the package. They also make honey and maple flavored peanut butters which are not included in the Big Six.I got a call from my sister a few days before I came to visit her. After sitting unopened at her house for a few weeks, she took it to her work to see what her coworkers might think of it. While they said that they all have great flavor, the white chocolate was a huge hit and the red pepper was really hot. When I was visiting, I got to try the peanut butters. There was just enough white chocolate to try but that was about it. It was creamy, sweet, and had a subtle flavor of white chocolate. While it was good, my favorite was actually the crunchy peanut butter. It was salty, not exceptionally sweet, and was the nuttiest peanut butter that I have ever seen. The cinnamon raisin was also pretty good. It had whole raisins and a nice cinnamon spice to the peanut butter. Creamy was a very good creamy peanut butter. The dark chocolate I thought, could make some really good peanut butter cookies and the red pepper peanut butter would work well in Thai food.

It was very good peanut butter and I'm glad I got to try it. I discovered that Whole Foods carries the smooth, the crunchy, white chocolate, and dark chocolate. I might decide to pick some up for myself but it still isn't something that I will eat on a regular basis.