I love the fair, and I love peanut butter, but I never thought I would see the two come together. However, a Smuckers Peanut Butter stand greeted us immediately upon entering the Topsfield Fair last month, and they were giving away free samples of natural peanut butter! Be still my heart. During our second visit to the stand, we noticed they were stirring the peanut butter with this nifty contraption.
If you are a fan of natural peanut butter, you know what a pain it is to stir. The liquidy part gets displaced when you insert your stirring utensil and sloshes over the side, and you always end up with dry bits at the bottom. I don't know about you, but I was very frustrated by the peanut butter stirring experience and was excited to see that gadget specific to this task existed. The woman told us we could buy it from the Smuckers Web site, but we found it on Amazon.com, where we got free super saver shipping after ordering some other stuff.
Grandpa Witmer's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer consists of a lid, a gasket-type thing, and a stirring rod with a plastic handle. The lid fits a standard-size peanut butter jar. It is a pretty simple device--essentially, you just insert the rod through a hole in the lid and turn the handle. It can take a bit of muscle on the first few turns. The curved design of the stirring rod allows all the peanut butter to be mixed at once, and even scrapes along the bottom to prevent those dry bits from collecting. The most amazing part is, when you pull the rod out, it is completely free of peanut butter, like you never even used it. The lid somehow has a self-cleaning mechanism. The downside, of course, is that there is no spoon to lick!
I just finished my first jar of peanut butter than I stirred with the mixer, and it stayed consistently mixed throughout. There was no oil pooling at the top, nor were there dried bits at the bottom. I'd recommend Grandpa Witmer's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer to frequent natural peanut butter eaters. It can be purchased at many Web sites, but I got mine from Amazon.com for $10.95.
Joe-Joe's are Trader Joe's version of Oreos. I am not an Oreo fan. I am not a store-bought cookie fan in general, but Oreos, with their grainy, lardy insides, are particularly repellent.
However, I am a sucker for a peppermint and chocolate combo AND for limited edition or holiday treats, so the Joe-Joe's found their way into my red basket, along with about 70,000 other impulse buys. I was also attracted to the bright, stripey box and the fact that "candy cane crush" was listed as an ingredient.
We broke into them as soon as we got in the car. I was pleased to find that while the Joe-Joe's look like Oreos, they surpass them in yuminess. The chocolate cookie was Oreo-level quality, but what really shines is the pepperminty inside. First of all, the filling is sweet, light, and vanilla-y--not lardy at all. The truly special part, however, is the candy cane crush, which lends the perfect amount of peppermint to the cookie, complementing, but not overpowering, the chocolate and vanilla flavors. All flavors work in harmony. The filling is a little gritty, but in a pleasant, "I'm eating candy canes!" sort of way, not in an "I'm eating Crisco mixed with granulated sugar!" sort of way.
Another bonus is a little verse on the side of the box, which reads:
Candy canes!
Candy canes!
Tasty cookie treat
Oh what fun it is to make
And even more fun to eat!
I read it out loud and got about halfway through before I realized it should be sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells."
The Candy Cane Joe-Joe's cost $2.99 at Trader Joe's. I would definitely buy them again.
My husband made this apple crisp that Alton Brown made on Good Eats the other day. It is basically a self-contained apple crisp, or apple crisp in an edible bowl, as Alton described it. It was easy and tasty, not to mention appealing in a novel way, what with the edible apple bowl and all. Plus, it is the sort of recipe where you likely have all the ingredients you need on hand.
Like any baked apple treat, it has to spend some time in the oven, so this is not a quick snack. But worth the wait!
I meant to write something everyday, but I've been busy. Phooey. So much for The Daily Special. Maybe more like The Once a Week Special.
Today, I'd like to address a controversial cuisine question. The question is, do you put ketchup on your hot dogs?
There are some people in this world that are vehemently against ketchup on a hot dog. I had no idea it was such a touchy subject until I was squeezing some on a dog one day and my husband freaked out. Since then, I've seen a similar reaction a number of times. Mostly on TV, but still. I'm a little puzzled by it. How could I have gone my whole life without knowing that you aren't supposed to put ketchup on a hot dog? I'm kind of mad at my parents, if you want to know the truth. I feel like it was their responsibility to teach me this basic tenant of hot dog consumption. I was already mad at them for sending me off to kindergarten without teaching me the pledge of allegiance, and now this!
I don't eat meat, by the way. But tonight I had a tofu dog. With ketchup. In fact, I did a little ketchup/Gulden's mustard combo with a Lightlife Smartdog. I'm a little self-conscious about it now, but I don't have any intention of giving it up. My tastebuds are set in their ways, at least when it comes to ketchup on a hot dog.
That is a tofu corn dog in the picture up there, in case you were wondering. Sans ketchup because I shared.
