A PBnJ Sandwich

Nikolai enjoyed his peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Or I should more appropriately call it a walnut butter and preserves sandwich! :)  I have to say that the cinnamon walnut butter was actually pretty good! Not to mention it is a great way to get in Omega-3's, some healthy oils and fats, protein, and don't forget the fiber!  I need to make more!

I made some walnut butter that I found here... Cinnamon Walnut Butter ... I did not use the stevia extract because I could not find it. I had no idea until I looked it up, and it is a natural sweetner. Honestly I added so much cinnamon and oil (using a blender is totally not the same as using a food processor!), I don't think it needed sugar. All the people who tried it liked it too!

I bought some chopped walnuts from the baking section at the store. I know it is probably better to use fresh, but honestly... My blender cannot handle walnut halves. I bought a couple of the 2 cup bags (only used one just in case) and it turned out to be about a little over 8oz of butter (that is approximate because I used 2 of the 4oz baby food jars to store it). Brandon has a magic bullet, so I used that to make the walnuts into a paste, which was about all the bullet could stand. It was starting to smell like melting plastic and I was only pulsing it!

I then transferred it into my blender and would run it for a moment or two. I eventually had to add oil (I used olive oil, probably about a 1/8 cup or 4 tablespoons) because it just wasn't working in the blender. But it tasted pretty good and olive oil is good for you. Course, so is cinnamon... so it''s just great all the way around!  I added cinnamon every time I stopped to scrape the sides of the jar. I stopped blending when the consistency and cinnamon seemed to be just right.

It went really well with some seedless blackberry jam...Yumm! Nikolai had about a half of a sandwich. I mean, it was close to one whole slice of bread worth of a sandwich! :)

4-6-2012