Campo Cooking

I made a wonderful discovery recently: my family doesn't really like peanut butter.  I goddamn love peanut butter, so much so that I'll take the trouble to make it for myself.  Now, I consider myself a good sharer and it always warms my heart to make food for folks, but nothing lasts long when it's split 12 ways.  It's nice to have something I can squirrel away for myself without guilt.  


So you're in the campo of Peru and want some peanut butter?  Here's what you do:


Buy a bag of peanuts.

Toast them, stirring constantly lest they burn.  Sometimes with a kitten climbing your back like an oak and sitting on your shoulder to watch what you're doing.

Then peel every one of those suckers.  Luckily, David offered to help me and I lent him my ipod.  He started listening to Bob Dylan because that's what I had on, but I switched him to Juanes after a while.  You'd have to be a jerk to dislike Juanes.  David was cute and kept showing folks that he learned how to work the ipod and talking really loud.

If you're lucky, your mamita will see what you're doing and chide your gringa nonsense.  They she'll show you that it's much easier and faster to sift the peanuts through your fingers and let the wind carry off the majority of the peels.  

Once all the peels are gone, it's time to get buff and put the peanuts through the hand grinder.

Season (salt and honey for me) and then you're all done!  I got about twice the amount below from a half a kilo of peanuts and almost 2 hours of work.  It's a lot of effort for a little, but irreplaceable, product.