Welcome to National Peanut Butter Month

Welcome to National Peanut Month! In March we celebrate the humble ground nut, the goober pea, the nut George Washington Carver turned into the staple of lunchboxes across the United States. According to the National Peanut Board:

"European explorers first discovered peanuts in Brazil. As early as 1500 B.C., the Incans of Peru used peanuts as sacrificial offerings and entombed them with their mummies to aid in the spirit life. Tribes in central Brazil also ground peanuts with maize to make a drink."

It wasn't until the early 1800's that the peanut became a commercial crop in the US, and even then it they were primarily grown for their oil, as a cocoa substitute, and as animal feed. The Civil War introduced peanuts to Union Soldiers who brought them north.

In the late 1800's the popularity of the peanut grew as vendors with PT Barnum's circus sold roasted peanuts to circus-goers. Soon street vendors were selling roasted nuts from carts and hawkers were selling them at baseball games.

It wasn't until 1900 that practical cultivating machinery loosed the nut's mass appeal. Peanut oil, roasted and salted nuts, peanut butter, and peanut based candies hit the market and the peanut supplanted cotton as the cash crop of the south.

So, let's celebrate with a little recipe from the July 1918 issue of Housewives Magazine: