There is something quintessentially American about peanut butter. While people in other parts of the world eat it, nowhere is it devoured with the same gusto as in the United States, where peanut butter is ensconced in an estimated 85% of home kitchens. Who exactly invented peanut butter is unknown; the only person to make that claim was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the chief medical officer at the Sanatarium, the fashionable health retreat in Battle Creek, Michigan. Kellogg, a vegetarian who invented Corn Flakes, was seeking an alternative for “cows’ butter.” He thought puréed nutmeats might work, and in the early 1890s Kellogg experimented with processing nuts through steel rollers. He served the nut butters to his patients at the Sanatarium, who loved them. Remarkably, in less than a decade peanut butter would emerge from the province of extremist “health nuts” to become a mainstream American fad food.
America’s elite visited the Battle Creek Sanatarium to recover their health, and many fell in love with the foods served there—particularly peanut butter. It soon became a passion with health-food advocates nationwide, and newspapers and magazines quoted vegetarians extolling its virtues. A vegetarianism advocate, Ellen Goodell Smith, published the first recipe for a peanut butter sandwich in her Practical Cook and Text Book for General Use (1896).
Homemade peanut butter was initially ground in a mortar and pestle, but this required considerable effort. It was also made with a hand-cranked meat- or coffee-grinder, but these did not produce a smooth butter. Joseph Lambert, an employee at the Sanatarium, adapted a meat-grinder to make it more suitable for producing nut butters at home. He also invented or acquired the rights to other small appliances, all intended to simplify the making of nut butters. These included a stovetop nut roaster, a small blancher (to remove the skins from the nuts), and a hand grinder that cranked out a smooth, creamy product. In 1896, Lambert left the Sanatarium and set up his own company to manufacture and sell the equipment.
Lambert mailed advertising flyers to households throughout the United States, and some recipients who bought the equipment started their own small businesses selling nut products. As nut butters became more popular, these machines proved inadequate to keep up with demand, so Lambert ramped up production of larger ones. He also published leaflets and booklets extolling the high food value of nuts and their butters. His wife, Almeda Lambert, published A Guide for Nut Cookery (1899), America’s first book devoted solely to cooking with nuts.
Vegetarians — who at the time practiced what we may now consider veganism — enjoyed all sorts of nut butters, which weren’t simply novel spreads for sandwiches but also sustaining, high-protein meat substitutes. But peanuts were the cheapest nuts, and it was peanut butter that dominated the field. It was first manufactured in small quantities by individuals and sold locally from door to door, but before long, small factories sprang up and peanut butter became a familiar article on grocers’ shelves. The American Vegetarian Society (AVS) sold peanut butter and actively promoted its sale through advertisements in magazines. In 1897 the AVS also began promoting the sale of the “Vegetarian Society Mill,” with an accompanying eight-page pamphlet encouraging vegetarians to create home-based peanut butter businesses. Vegetarians all over the country began to manufacture commercial peanut butter. The Vegetarian Food & Nut Company, in Washington, D.C., sold a product called “Dr. Shindler’s Peanut Butter” throughout the United States for decades. The company also produced private-label peanut butter for grocery store chains, and non-vegetarians quickly adopted the tasty new product.
The Atlantic Peanut Refinery in Philadelphia, launched in December 1898, may have been the first company to use the words “peanut butter” on its label. The term was picked up by other commercial manufacturers, although a New Haven, Connecticut, manufacturer preferred the term “Peanolia,” (later shortened to Penolia), and registered it in 1899.
By 1899, an estimated two million pounds of peanut butter were manufactured annually in the United States, and by the turn of the century, ten peanut-butter manufacturers competed for the burgeoning US market. From its origin just six years earlier as an alternative to creamery butter, peanut butter had established itself as an American pantry staple and a necessity for schoolchildren’s lunch pails.
Headline image credit: Peanut Butter Texture, by freestock.ca. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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March 1st is quite the celebratory day as Little Known Holidays go - and in 2013, there are eight of them (that I know of at this time). Every one looks like a ton of fun, but with only so many hours in a day and only so much space in a blog post, let's split the difference and choose exactly half, and celebrate accordingly.
Let's start things off with National Pig Day. Created in 1972 by two sisters - Ellen Stanley and Mary Lynne Rave - the purpose of the day is "to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place as one of man's most intellectual and domesticated animals."
Next on the list is Peanut Butter Lover's Day. And Share a Smile Day. Not sure what the backstory is on either one of these, but the porcine fellow below sees no reason why he shouldn't celebrate both - from ear to ear and elbow deep:
Pigs
and
Smiles
and
Books for Young People
Why not all four? Um, well, I think we have to draw the line at mixing books and peanut butter in the same celebration. That just does not end well. (The last time I tried, I ended up with peanut butter on the cover of one of my favorite books. And do you know, a little bit of that peanut butter is still there? True story!)But enough about my peanut-buttery past. Let's get to those books. Below, you'll find five pig-populated books that I've very much enjoyed reading and/or sharing with my kids over the years. For each one, I've listed the title, author and illustrator, reading level, and the book's Piggy Connection. If I've reviewed or posted in some way about the book, the title will be a clickable link that takes you directly to that post.Pete & PicklesWritten and Illustrated by Berkeley BreathedAges 4-8 Piggy Connection: Pete is a very orderly pig, whose orderly life takes a sudden disorderly turn.Arthur, For the Very First TimeWritten by Patricia MacLachlanIllustrated by Lloyd BloomAges 9-12 Piggy Connection: Bernadette, Uncle Wrisby's beloved pet pig, will soon give birth to a litter of wiggly piglets. And when she needs some help, it comes from a very unlikely source.Charlotte's WebWritten by E.B. WhiteIllustrated by Garth WilliamsAges 6-11
Piggy Connection: Wilbur the pig is the runt of the litter, destined for a very short life, indeed. But then Fern the farm girl steps in to save him, and Charlotte the spider helps him find his way in this world.PiggiesWritten by Audrey Wood and Don WoodIllustrated by Don WoodAges 5 and up Piggy Connection: Fingers and toes. Who knew these "piggies" could be so much fun?The Three PigsWritten and Illustrated by David WiesnerAges 4 and upPiggy Connection: The classic tale of the Three Little Pigs gets a not-so-classic retelling. Because this time, the pigs are taking charge of their story.* * *
And that concludes our little celebration. But the fun doesn't have to end here. Go on, enjoy March 1st in your own creative way, in all its piggy, peanut-buttery, smiley, book-filled glory. (But remember, you might want keep the peanut-buttery parts separate from the book-filled parts...)
3 Stars The Girl Who Cannot Eat Peanut Butter Sharon Chisvin Carol Leszcz 20 Pages Ages: 3 to 7 …………. …………………. Back Cover: The Girl Who Cannot Eat Peanut Butter is a rhyming story for young children about coping with food allergies. The girl of the title sometimes gets upset about having a food allergy, [...]
Our house favorite peanut butter is Skippy Super Chunk. My personal favorite is
Naturally Nutty Butter Toffee on one half of my toasted English muffin, and that creamed honey I got at the Clintonville Farmer's Market on the other half.
Today I have an original peanut butter poem over at
Jama's Alphabet Soup, and at Amy LV's
Sharing Our Notebooks, you can peek inside my notebook and see how the peanut butter poem was born!
Amy has the Poetry Friday roundup today at
The Poem Farm!
My son asked me to do this week’s post on the same book he’s doing his book report on, so, for his 7th birthday*, I’m taking on a middle-grade pick.
Sixth-grader Susan Simmons is immediately put-off by substitute teacher Mr. Smith because he’s replacing her favorite teacher, Ms. Schwartz, for the rest of the year. He doesn’t win any points with her when he announces he intends to straighten the class out, either, because, as Susan points out: you know how boring a straight line is. And the fact that he hates music so much that he literally shivers every time picks up her piccolo to leave for her lesson completely solidifies her feelings.
Yet, none of those are the reason she follows him home after class…all the way into his house. She’s actually there to stealthily retrieve a note he confiscated from her in class, and only opens his door when she hears an inexplicable but horrible shrieking inside. Turns out, Mr. Smith isn’t being tortured (or torturing someone else) as Susan feared; he’s only enjoying the “music” of his mother planet. That’s right; Susan even watches him peel off his fake human face to “call home” on his special monitor.
It takes little convincing for her friend Peter to declare the need for a return visit/further investigation, and that’s where my favorite part comes in:
Looking for evidence that Mr. Smith is indeed an alien, Peter goes straight to…the kitchen! “Who knows what they eat on the planet he comes from?” he asks.
Exactly what I would’ve thought and done!
They scope out Mr. Smith’s fridge and find (typical of the bachelor he is…or pretends to be): cold cuts, a half-empty carton of milk, a bottle of catsup, and two six-packs of beer. Peter astutely notes, “He sure doesn’t eat like an alien.”
But even though everything looks innocent enough, Peter’s not done; he insist[s] on checking the cupboards. He even open[s] the peanut butter jar to see if it really ha[s] peanut butter in it, and not some kind of extraterrestrial goo.
Atta boy, Peter; way to teach readers to leave no stone unturned and no jar unopened! And also for showing any aliens who read this book that their worthiest human adversaries may not be the biggest and tallest ones. ;)
*Who’m I kidding? His birthday has nothing to do with it; I’d do anything for that kid, anytime. <3
One of the activities my two boys (ages 5 and 7) and their 2 year old cousin
all love to do together is play with the play kitchen at my parents' house. There's just something about pretending to cook that appeals to kids. For a long time, before we had our own play kitchen set up in our home, it was one of the things my kids were most drawn to at children's museums and friends' houses. Come to think of it, my sister and I are four years apart and rarely played together growing up but my sister's Little Tikes kitchen was one thing that we both enjoyed.
 |
| Me and my sister, circa 1986. |
Carolyn Parkhurst's
Cooking with Henry and Elliebelly (illustrated by Dan Yaccarino) perfectly captures young childrens' fascination with cooking and creating. We are introduced to siblings Henry and Elliebelly via their cooking "show". Henry, the older sibling, has his own vision of how their show should proceed. As Henry tries to instruct his "viewers" in the finer points of making raspberry-peanut butter-marshmallow waffles, the toddler Elliebelly wreaks havoc and frustrates Henry with her very toddlerlike demands. First she insists she be allowed to help. Then she orders Henry to wear a pirate hat. Frustrated but undeterred, Henry gamely works around his dervish of a sister until their play is interrupted by their (offstage) mother's offer of real waffles.
One of the things I love most about this book is that the author clearly gets how kids play, and how easily older siblings become frustrated with their younger siblings. Reading the interactions between Henry and Elliebelly is a lot like listening in on my own kids as they play in one room while I'm in another. It was a nice touch to have their mother's offstage responses to their bickering presented in quote bubbles. Henry and his little sister are a bit younger than my own kids but their personalities are remarkably similar. It's not a stretch to accept that Elliebelly insists Henry wear a pirate hat while they do their "show" because I have a son who likes to wear a Batman cape while doing just about anything.
We decided to make Henry's raspberry-peanut butter-marshmallow waffles, with one caveat: we didn't follow Henry's recipe. His recipe calls for "Seventeen cups of imported flour from Kansas," and duck eggs. And that is before Elliebelly decides to add pizza and "Baby Anne" to the mix. Yeah. I think we'll stick with a more traditional approach. If you can even call raspberry-peanut butter-marshmallow waffles traditional. We whipped these up for an after school snack.
Raspberry-peanut butter-marshmallow waffles
One of the things we love about New Hampshire is the change in seasons...sometimes that can be from minute to minute. Right now we have snow with more on the way. In fact the snow in the front of the house has been so deep I can't get to the bird feeders, so I put some kindling wood covered with peanut butter and birdseed sticking up out of the snow. This morning an industrious squirrel made his way over under and through the snow to grab a nice treat.
As a peanut butter lover, I sympathize about the peanut butter on the book. I've done the same thing. (*blushes*)
Love your recommendations. The only one I haven't read is Pete and Pickles so I'll have to pick that one up at the library. I adore David Wiesner's THE THREE PIGS. So clever and outside the box. And CHARLOTTE'S WEB has always been in my top ten MG list.
Interesting bit of trivia regarding ARTHUR, FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. It's the only book still in print that I worked on as an editorial assistant at what was then called Harper & Row. And as the editorial assistant, one of my jobs was writing the flap copy. The other was coming up with a list of possible titles, since Patricia MacLachlan submitted it as Untitled.
I hope you do read PETE AND PICKLES. I very much enjoyed it, and it is just a lovely story. More on the quiet side, which I think you mentioned before that you liked? I did a full review, which you can find by visiting the Reviews page, if you want.
I remember you telling me that story about ARTHUR. It is a fine thing to be connected in that way to such a heartwarming book.
I surprised myself with the number of books I have where pigs are a major character. I still have about seven others I didn't include for space purposes. All the better, I suppose, that lack of space - that way I can post another round of piggy books next year ;-)
I'll look forward to your piggy post next year!