It All Started With The Peanut Butter

It all started with the peanut butter.

I loathe store-brand peanut butter and won't feed my kids the goop made with sugar, salt, and enough preservatives to embalm a small dog. So I buy the expensive health food store brands, where the only ingredient is peanuts.

But then I'm left stirring the separated oil back into the peanut paste, and I spill a ton of the oil, and the remaining paste gets harder and harder, and I end up throwing out about a third of a jar of peanut cement for every jar of peanut butter that I buy.

I lamented this fate to a friend -- maybe the only friend on the planet who wouldn't just slap her forehead and hiss "So buy JIF already, you freak!" But although she shared my nutritional quirks, she still met my complaint with disbelief: "Why don't you just make it in the food processor?"

Food processor? Me? Aren't food processors the toys of yuppie scum? You know, like cell phones? (Hey wait a minute, I got a cell phone, and I love it...)

I started looking at food processors on the sly, like a teenager perusing the Victoria's Secret catalog. Oh, I'm not really LOOKING, I'm just... uh... walking slowly in the appliance aisle.

The first thing I noticed -- the first thing I ALWAYS notice -- was the price. Just how much homemade peanut butter would I need to make to justify laying out $200 for a ... a... a YUPPIE TOY?

But I was thinking about it. More lingering in kitchen stores, more slow strolls down the appliance aisle. Until one day my store credit in the Bed and Bath store equalled almost exactly the phenomenal sales price of $149, and I was the proud owner of a Cuisinart.

And JUST like a cell phone, I can't explain now how I lived without it. You can mix ANYTHING in this baby. Think of it as a blender-juicer-meat grinder-heavy-duty-mixer, and you haven't even scratched the surface of what you can and WILL do with it.

It's big, and you really need the counter space for it; if you stuff it away in that "appliance cubby" or on that shelf up over the stove that you can't reach without standing on a chair, then you're not going to use it. Leave it out, leave it plugged in, and you'll chop, mash, whirl, puree, julienne, grind, or slice something every day. The big lexan mixing bowl and cover are machine washable, too (but you probably want to do the blades by hand), so cleanup isn't a big issue at all.

The model I got came with a bunch of recipes and even an instructional video to help you get a sense of the HUNDREDS of concoctions you can create with your new toy. It's so versatile, it's hard to imagine what you CAN'T do. There's pizza dough, guacamole, soups and stews, and much more. I'll close with a personal favorite:

1. Pour two cups of peanuts into the mixing bowl.

2. Pulse in repeated three second bursts until peanuts appear to be chopped evenly.

3. Process the living daylights out of the peanuts.

4. Spoon into a tupperware and refrigerate.

5. Serve on whole wheat bread with fruit spread, honey, or (shudder) bananas.

It's pretty darn simple!