We are often told “I’m too busy to make things from scratch”, or worse “that junk in the pantry is just for the kids, school lunches etc”. Let’s get one thing straight, if you get sick (and if you are consuming a diet predominated by processed foods, then it’s ‘when’ rather than if, you’re going to run out of time sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms, in line at the pharmacy, so why not take some time now and make some things from scratch. Better yet, if you’ve got children from about 5 years upwards, get them to make things, the strike rate of them actually eating it, if they have made it will be higher!
An easy thing to start with is peanut butter, well almond butter actually.
Peanut butter in the supermarket is about 85% peanuts. What is the other 15% you ask? Stuff your body doesn’t need, but the product needs to remain fresh on the supermarket shelf and also to ensure the oil from the nuts doesn’t separate and make the consumer antsy, ooh and sugar and salt – we can’t sell anything without those two ingredients. If you make your own nut butters, it will be 100% nuts.
Here’s how.
Grab one of your children and give them a bag of insecticide free almonds (you can get these at the supermarket – see supermarkets can be your friend), give them an oven tray, a food processor, a clean jar and a spatula.
Leave them to it.
If they spread the almonds thinly on a clean oven tray, and bake for 10 minutes in a hot oven (200 degrees Celsius), then remove and let cool completely before putting in a food processor and processing until one big glob of almond butter is slowly moving around the bowl – then you’ll have your own fresh almond butter! Have them spoon into a clean jar and store in the fridge. If you want extra smooth, add a teaspoon of coconut oil to the blending at the very end, or if you want crunchy, add some crunchy nuts at the very end.
NO added sugar
NO added salt
NO added vegetable oils (never too sure which vegetable oil food manufacturers are referring to here and our labeling laws don’t require them to differentiate)
NO preservatives
NO butylated hydroxyanisole (320)
Be careful when reading marketing spiel about products, sometimes the food manufacturer can spout the health benefits of the main ingredient, for example ‘peanuts are low GI’ – which they are, but the product ‘peanut butter’ that has sugar, salt and fats added to it … isn’t. (peanuts have a GI of 14 – almonds GI 15 – anything under GI 55 is considered low).