Home made "nut butter"

So just about everyday, after our workout, my wife and I down a protein shake and then in a few hours take down our mid-morning snack. Our midmorn snack lately has taken the form of a rice cake (or 2) spread with some peanut butter. High carb, low sugar, high protein snack. It's a great, absolutely wonderful post-workout snack. Well in my enthusiastic culinary skills (read no idea how to cook, but like playing with new toys like my Magic Bullet), I decided I would try to make my own Peanut Butter. The problem, I had not peanuts. Doh!

I did, however, have a can of mixed nuts. I bought them to add to my homemade trail mix, which will interestingly, never ever see a trail (only my office :-)  The trail mix is really good, filling, and a low sugar, high fiber, high protein snack - something that our paleolithic ancestors probably dined on often. It contains: mixed nuts, sunflower seed, pitted dates, raisins, extra walnuts, and dried blueberries, cranberries, and cherries.

I digress. I was talking about making homemade nut butter. So here's what you do. Add about 1/2 cup (that's 8oz) to the magic bullet cup. Chop the nuts coarsely using the flat blade. It won't do much, but it will get them down from full size nuts to smaller more manageable chunks. You will have to shake the device and scrape the sides a few times. OK, when the nuts are a little smaller add 2 teaspoons olive oil and continue to blend using a pulse technique and shaking with the cross blade. As the butter gets thicker you will have to scrape the sides of the cup. Eventually, and actually quite rapidly it will smooth out. I blended mine a touch too long and it became liquidy, which I hope will wear off in the fridge. This is natural nut butter, so it's recommended that you refrigerate it.

At any rate, there you go. You get about half the butter you would in a small container of peanut butter you purchase at the grocery store. You get the fun of making your own. And you get a high protein, relatively low fat, high fiber, and no artificial additives spread for your mid morning snack.

Enjoy!