Celebrate National Peanut Butter Lovers Month Every November
Peanut butter lovers unite!
(Creamy or crunchy doesn’t matter)
Because November is National Peanut Butter Lovers Month.
A month to eat peanut butter morning, noon, and night! By the spoonful, if you’d like. Or use it to make your other favorite foods even better.
The month was originally just a day. Southern Peanut Growers created Peanut Butter Lovers Day in 1990. The date was November 4, honoring the date of the first application for a peanut butter patent. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg filed that application on November 4, 1895.
But Americans love their peanut butter! And the delicious, sticky spread was turning 100. So in 1995 the one-day celebration expanded to fill the whole month of November.
And we’ve never looked back.
Peanuts and Peanut Butter Trivia
Peanuts aren’t really nuts. They are actually legumes. And legumes are seeds that grow in a pod, like peas.
Peanut butter is a paste made from peanuts (duh!). In its most pure form, it’s just ground up peanuts, with maybe a little salt and/or oil. Some peanut butter contains honey or sugar to make it sweeter.
But you can also dress it up with many other ingredients:
- Chocolate, mint, coconut, and more to create a “gourmet” peanut butter.
- Other nuts, like macadamia or pecans.
- Spices, like the chili peppers that add heat to the South Indian peanut paste.
Peanuts, whether whole or ground up, are a healthy food. Reasons for this include:
- Resveratrol helps keep arteries healthy and flexible. This keeps blood flowing and lowers your chance of heart disease.
- Resveratrol is also an antioxidant, along with p-coumaric acid. Antioxidants can prevent premature aging and lower your risk of cancer.
- Protein helps your body make and repair muscle cells, skin cells, and more. Each serving of peanut butter (2 Tablespoons) gives you 8 grams of protein.
- Fiber helps keep you regular. It can also help you stay at a healthy weight, which may lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes. One serving of chunky peanut butter contains about 2.6 grams of fiber (up to about 10% RDA, depending on your gender).
And a few just-for-fun peanut butter facts:
- It takes 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter.
- By law a product must be at least 90% peanuts to be called peanut butter (in the United States).
- Most peanuts in the US get turned into peanut butter.
- The fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth is called Arachibutyrophobia. Well, that’s a mouthful! I think I may fear trying to pronounce that word more than I fear sticky peanut butter!
- By age 18 the average American child has eaten 1,500 PB&J sandwiches!
Scroll down for some ideas on celebrating this deliciously nutty holiday.
How to Celebrate National Peanut Butter Lovers Month
For the entire month of November … eat peanut butter!
Have you ever thought about making your own peanut butter? This month might be the time to try. It’s simple! Try one of these recipes (they’re all pretty similar):
- Alton Brown’s Peanut Butter: Includes directions for roasting your peanuts. Also which peanuts to use for eating vs making peanut butter.
- Homemade Peanut Butter: Just 3 ingredients. Uses pre-roasted & salted peanuts.
- The Prairie Homestead’s Peanut Butter: Includes notes on roasting your own peanuts, skipping the added oil, and storage.
Use peanut butter in cooking and baking.
Salads, Sandwiches and Entrees:
- Crunchy Turkey Salad with Peanut Dressing: Asian-inspired, light lunch or starter.
- Veggie Sammies with PB Satay Sauce: Up the flavor on your sandwich!
- Peanut Butter Chicken Enchiladas: Yum. Just yum.
- Chicken Wings with Spicy Peanut Sauce: Sweet, salty, and spicy perfection. Your new favorite wings sauce.
Desserts and Snacks:
- Graceland Mini Cupcakes: Bananas and peanut butter … with a bacon topping!
- Chewy Peanut Butter Brownies
- Creamy Peanut Butter Fudge
- Peanut Butter Fudge Cake: Fudgy cake topped with a layer of peanut butter and then frosted.
- Best Peanut Butter Cookies: Can’t forget the cookies! From bon appetit, this recipe uses natural peanut butter, double-roasted peanuts, and brown butter.
Get the animals in on the deliciousness, too!
Many dogs love peanut butter! So treat your best friend to some. Just keep a few things in mind:
- Peanut butter has lots of calories, so it’s not the best treat for an overweight dog.
- Some peanut butters use xylitol as a sweetener. Xylitol is toxic to dogs, so always check the ingredient list before giving peanut butter to your dog!
- Some dogs can be allergic to peanuts, just like people. Obviously skip the peanut butter if your pooch is allergic.
- Only give small amounts at a time. It may be fun to watch dogs trying to eat the sticky stuff, but it can be stressful to them.
Make a peanut butter/lard treat for your birds (and probably the squirrels too!). This recipe uses chick starter, a high-protein, vitamin rich feed for newly hatched chicks. It’s apparently also good for giving all birds extra nutrition during harsh weather. But it’s probably not necessary, and you could just substitute bird seed.
For a simple alternative, coat a pine cone in peanut butter and roll in bird seed. Hang.
Use peanut butter in unconventional ways
You’ve probably heard peanut butter helps loosen gum from fabrics and hair, so it’s easier to get off. But it can also get other sticky stuff off other things:
- Loosen gum from the soles of your shoes.
- Remove glue from your hands. Just rub it in until the glue wipes off.
- Remove stickers or labels from just about anything. Cover the sticker with peanut butter, leave about 5 minutes and scrape it off. Of course, you’ll need to wipe/wash off the peanut butter residue.
Clean vinyl or leather. Yep, just rub it with peanut butter! Then buff it clean.
Shave with it. Yes, really. If you’re out of your regular shaving cream, use a dollop of peanut butter (creamy, of course!).
Celebrate peanuts and peanut butter with other peanut lovers
If you’re in or near Dothan, Alabama, get yourself to the National Peanut Festival. This annual festival has been happening since 1938! It celebrates the role of peanuts to the area, which grows almost 2/3 of the US peanut crop.
