Peanut butter

I recently got a food processor.  It's something I've been putting off for a long time.  They are expensive, some are large (and heavy) and take up a lot of counter/cabinet space, and other than chop nuts, fruits and vegetables into really small pieces, what else can they do?  The more cooking I did, the more I realize how helpful it would be in my kitchen.  So, I caved and bought one.

Over dinner one night, we started looking at the recipe book it came with and quickly picked out two things we wanted to try making.  The first was banana "ice cream" made with frozen bananas, vanilla and coconut milk.  It was good, but the kids weren't fooled!

The second thing to make was peanut butter (guess who picked that one out?)!  We couldn't do this one right away because we didn't have peanuts on hand.  Once we got the peanuts, I decided to make a scientific experiment out of it.  Well... as complicated of a science experiment that I could handle anyway!  

You see, one of the places we go food shopping has a peanut grinder where you can make your own peanut butter.  Our little two year old thinks it is the most amazing thing out there, aside from his toy dump truck and Lightning McQueen underpants.  Whenever we pull up to the store, he starts with "Mommy, we need peeta-butter??" 

I corralled the kids and explained that we were going to make peanut butter out of peanuts.  You should have seen his face when we turned this:

 into this:

It took some time (about 2 minutes), but they all watched in amazement!  Watching something like that change right in front of them was so much fun!  We don't always have peanuts on hand, but we always have walnuts and almonds.  Homemade walnut/almond butter anyone?