Homemade Peanut Butter from Raw Peanuts

Reader Contribution by Lanette Lepper
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I am ashamed to admit how long I had lived here in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia before I learned that I was really close to the “Peanut Capitol of the World”.  Being from New England, peanuts were not up there on my list of produce items to try to source locally.  Happily, I now know better.

A year and a half ago, my friend Nancy and I had taken a road trip to go to our first “Heritage Harvest Festival” at Monticello.  We came home ‘the back way’ from Charlottesville (aka Rte 460), stocking up on molasses at ‘Adams Country Store’ (more famous for its country hams and dandoodle sausages) and stopping at every Mom and Pop antique store we could find.  At one of them, we asked where the locals go to buy their peanuts.  In unison, two older gentlemen said “Wakefield Peanuts.”  And so Wakefield Peanuts it was! 

My family couldn’t get enough of the homemade peanut butter, sugared peanuts and homemade peanut brittle, so a few months later we took another day trip out that way to secure more molasses and peanuts.  This past summer, I stocked up on several bags of peanuts at the farmer’s market (did you know they keep quite well in the freezer?), but last week, horror of horrors, my supply ran dry. 

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