So it's been about a week since the attempted break-in at my cottage. The police department came by with a photo line up for me to look at and whattaya-know Ms. Junkie-Burglar's mugshot photo was right there. It may sound heartless but I hope it's her third felony offense and they lock her up and throw away the key. In the meantime, my landlord is looking into putting in security gates around the cottages. It's unfortunate that this happened since this is a really nice part of Midtown. I guess it's not as crime-free as I thought though. I asked around and it turns out that another cottage neighbor had a break-in shortly before mine and they got in and stole some stuff including her laptop. Additionally another neighbor across the street has had their car broken into repeatedly. Talk about the suck.
Other than the burglary, it's been a pretty quiet week- I attended a girls' night get together at a buddy's casa, made loads of homemade strawberry jam, hung out with friends and tonight I saw a really cute movie (with Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg) called, "Celeste and Jesse Forever," at the Tower Theatre. It had a great line in it that made me do some introspective thinking- "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" I'm guilty of choosing the former a lot. I think I need to work on that. The visit to the movie theater also made me think a lot about how the Tower Theatre sucks and is in need of a serious renovation- the seats were so shot in the theatre we were in that I literally had a metal spring digging into my left butt cheek during the entire movie.
Anyhow, to balance out all the strawberry jam I made; I decided to try my hand at homemade peanut butter. Now I could have taken the easier route and bought already roasted/shelled peanuts and gone from there...but oooooh no, not me! That would be too simple. Instead, they happened to have raw, unshelled peanuts at the farmers' market this Sunday so I bought two pounds. The prep took a wee bit more effort but the end result was delish. Kidlet #1 and Mr.S. both gave it the thumbs up.
Peanut Butter From Scratch
Ingredients
2 lbs. raw peanuts, in the shell
Kosher salt
Honey
Canola Oil (or peanut oil)
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Shell peanuts and rub the inner filmy skins off (if you have little ones that like to "help" when cooking , this is a great task to assign to them).
3. Place shelled peanuts on a baking sheet and spread them out evenly in a single layer.
4. Place baking sheet with peanuts in oven, cook for roughly 25 minutes. Toss the peanuts gently with a spatula, midway through the cooking time.
5. Remove baking sheet from oven. Allow peanuts to cool for 10-15 minutes.
6. Place peanuts in a food processor. Add 2 tablespoons of Canola oil. Process mixture for a few minutes.
7. At this point, add salt and honey (to taste).
8. If the peanut butter looks a bit dry, add a bit more Canola oil. Pulse until desired smoothness.
9. Place peanut butter in an airtight container and store in fridge.
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