Who needs peanut butter anyways?!

As many of you fellow allergen avoiding families out there may be doing, we are also avoiding peanuts and tree nuts for a bit, at least until we get the ok from the allergist. The idea is to get B eating as many low allergen foods as she can first and then tackle the biggies once she has shown she can tolerate the supposedly more innocuous foods. But being a vegetarian and enjoying a diet that resembles that of a kindergartener, I am a self-professed peanut butter fan. Great source of protein, tasty, I can put it on ANYTHING. . . I digress.

I wanted peanut butter for B. But no peanuts for now, or nuts for that matter. I have read what seems to be every stinking label on various sunflower seed butters in the store but I keep coming against the same brick wall--- "processed on the same equipment as soy nuts." Soy is pure evil in our household, so we needed another plan. I got to thinking that I could just make my own. Easy peasey, right? Well, I not only have the diet of a five year old but also the patience of one. We are fairly booked with our food trials for the next few weeks and I simply did not want to wait several weeks to try sunflower seeds in order to make the butter.

I started to think that maybe, just maybe I could make hemp seed butter! But where on earth could I get those hemp seeds, I wondered? Surely no one in the US would sell such a thing, what with hemp commonly only associated by the general public with images of druggies and other such riff raff (sigh). And once more, enter Whole Foods! I heart you, Whole Foods Market!!! While strolling by the protein powder that my DH was checking out, I saw the big, sunny yellow bags of shelled hemp seed, otherwise known as hemp hearts!! Thank goodness for Canada and their hemp imports! I was so excited that I threw one bag into the cart without so much as a price check (I still have no clue as to how much I paid for this product).

So now, as I type, I am roasting hemp seeds in my blessed oven in order to create hemp seed butter before this night is over. The timer is almost up, so I must stop writing, but I had to share the excitement! If it is a go, I will post the results! It will technically be a single ingredient recipe, since oils and salt are considered freebies! Yay!