Word: peanuts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...thought of that line while watching the eight megabankers who showed up for Wednesday's House Financial Services Committee hearing. There was good theater in the spectacle of these potentates getting a congressional word-whipping as if they were the chastised bosses of the tobacco industry or a poisoned-peanut-butter factory. Real old-timers who tuned in to the charade might have gone dewy-eyed in reminiscence of Depression days. That's when bandits like Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were outlaw heroes, and the big villains were the bankers, who foreclosed on homes and farms, sent widows...
...recent salmonella outbreak at the Peanut Corporation of America has led to the recall of more than 1,800 peanut-containing products, from off-brand dog biscuits to Trader Joe's vegan pad Thai, and sent sales of peanut butter plunging 25%, despite assurances that jars on supermarket shelves are not tainted. But the panic illustrates just how thoroughly the legume (Arachis hypogaea is, technically, not a nut), fashioned into a paste, has permeated the American diet. Spread on crackers, slathered on celery, melted with chocolate: peanut butter goes with almost anything...
...Peanut butter's true inventor is unknown, but Dr. John Harvey Kellogg has as good a claim to the title as anyone. In 1895, the cereal pioneer patented a process for turning raw peanuts into a butter-like vegetarian health food that he fed to clients at his Battle Creek, Mich., sanatorium. The taste caught on, and in a few years, the spread had gone mainstream...
...chemist Joseph Rosefield fixed peanut butter's tendency to separate by adding hydrogenated vegetable oil; he called the thick, creamy result Skippy (probably after a popular comic strip), and a brand was born. Within the decade, Skippy was fighting it out with other established brands like Peter Pan and Heinz. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches invaded children's lunch boxes soon after: by one 2002 estimate, the average American child eats 1,500 PB&J sandwiches before graduating from high school. In the 1990s, nut-allergy fears led some schools to eliminate peanuts from cafeteria menus. Still, peanut butter remains...
...last Thursday, the library’s café still stocked nutrition bars that had been recalled during a nation-wide salmonella outbreak. Clif Bar & Company announced a voluntary recall of various CLIF and LUNA bars on Jan. 30, citing “concerns that the recalled bars contain peanut products that were manufactured by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), which is the focus of an ongoing Salmonella investigation.” Clif’s Web site lists Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch bars with sell-by dates between Oct. 9, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2009 as one of their...