Save your Mornings: Grind your own Peanut Butter

4 comments

Just a friendly reminder here, why bulk peanut butter is better than the plastic jar.*

It’s better, because inevitably, when you twist off that red cap and see this:

It’s Monday morning, 8 am.

Monday morning, when you don’t have time to find two matching socks let alone stir a precariously-full jar of separated peanut solid and oils.  Because while you are stirring that jar with one hand…the other is trying to get panties on a toddler that knows how to dress herself, just inexplicably won’t except, well, because:  Toddler.  And that leads to this:

Which you don’t have time for … so no sandwich that day – just an apple, some savory-stick carbs and some leftover marshmallows from Halloween craft-attempts.

Day two, you reach into the fridge to discover this:

 

Now the outside of the jar has lost any chance at providing friction, making it impossible to open…making you late for school again…and this time you give up early and send your kid to school with a fiver, hoping, for your child’s sake, it’s Pizza, not Stroganoff, Day at the cafeteria.

And of course, you will most likely throw the container away when are finished.  Because when faced with the choice of cleaning peanut butter out of a plastic jar so I can recycle it, or watching “Tinkerbell:  Secret of the Wings” for the 16th time, I’ll gladly snuggle down with the girls and pretend I don’t know the winter fairy is Tinkerbell’s long lost sister.

Taken from the Liquid Bulk Buying Guide, some tips for buying bulk peanut butter:

  • Use a glass jar.  (Easier to clean an oily substance off glass than plastic.)
  • Use a straight jar, a perfect cylinder like a Mason jar.  (Again, easier to clean.)
  • Use a wide-mouthed jar.  (So you can get a rubber spatula in there at the end.  And so you don’t make a mess at the store.)
  • Use two jars and rotate.  (So you don’t run out.)
  • Use smaller instead of larger jars.
Why do I use small jar?  Because our peanut butter doesn’t have preservatives in it like the store-bought stuff and the oil will go rancid.
You could keep it in the fridge, but I’m not so good at foresight and like my peanut butter ready to be spreadable the minute I take it out fridge (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve placed natural peanut butter in front of the floor heater, the toaster oven or stovetop just to get it to room temperature ASAP).
So…I use a pint-sized Mason jar, keep it in the pantry and it lasts a few weeks.

*This story written as an immediate reaction to Monday morning.

November 10, 2015

About Me

About Me

I’ve been passionate about combatting blind consumerism since 2008 and joined the Zero Waste movement by starting this blog in 2013, soon after my second child was born. I think it might have been trying to unwrap a toy or someone’s attempt to sell me a butt-wipe warmer that put me over the edge… read more

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4 Comments

  1. IronMike

    What's wrong with Stroganoff?

    Reply
  2. LITTERLESS

    Hahaha, YES to this!!! So true. Freshly ground, zero waste is so much better. Plus, another boon to weekday mornings–no need to take out the trash anymore 🙂

    Reply
  3. zerowastemommy

    🙂 I guess I don't have a good answer. I picture the lunch lady turning over an industrial kitchen-sized can and the solid cylindrical-formed Stroganoff, sliding out and then free standing in the pot…

    Reply
  4. zerowastemommy

    Exactly! Although, picturing my kitchen after I return from dropping off the kids at school….there's still plenty of work to do!

    Reply

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