Nuts Again!

I've been mixing us up blended "nut butter" for ages, generally combining peanut and almond butter.  Sometimes I have added cashew butter, and always cut in chopped walnuts and pecans.  The problem lately is that almond butter has gotten so expensive.  When I find cashew butter, it always has sugar added.  As a result, I've been buying the peanut butter and then blending the rest with whole nuts.

My latest batch was a bit different.  Aldi sells a 14.75 ounce can of mixed nuts for a little over four bucks.  There is no sugar and just a bit of salt -- hardly enough for me to care about the sodium content.  This was much cheaper per pound than almonds and provided a mix of many healthy nuts -- although it did also include peanuts.  Either way, I was game to try this as an alternative to almond and cashew butter.

While we have a Vitamix that can chop and blend anything, I always start out by hand chopping stuff.  It makes it easier to blend over all.  This was the entire can and I did add walnuts, pecans, more almonds and chia seeds to it. For peanut butter, I'd picked up a 26 ounce jar of Smucker's All-Natural at Walmart (sells for $4.16, which is a good price).  We'd made it through about 2/3 of the jar but it was a pain to keep the oil mixed -- which is why I decided to make a blend again.

In order to keep from ending up with nut cement, a couple of teaspoons of flax seed oil and a smidge of Italian sunflower and olive oil went in.  The nuts were added a little at a time, and the mixture blended for quite some time.  It was a bit loose, but the peanut butter had gotten quite thick in the jar, so this was a good way to compensate for that.  I did make sure not to over blend with the last handful of nuts thrown in since we like our spread chunky.

 The peanut butter was a real pain to get out of the jar and completely mix in.  That's the downside of getting the all natural formula. The oil rises to the top and you have to mix it back in.  With the 26 ounce jar, that was especially hard.

This is what we ended up with.  It completely filled the 26 ounce jar plus and additional regular sized jar.  Unlike the natural versions you can buy, this oil should stay well mixed.  Getting 42 ounces of low-salt, no sugar, multi-variety nut butter for seven and a half bucks (well, a little less than that since we'd already consumed a third of the 26 ounce jar), is a really good deal.  Best of all, it tastes really good.

We are nuts for nut butter!