Justin’s Nut Butters: my favorite snack

Justin’s nut butters: chocolate hazelnut blend in a packet

Justin’s Nut Butters, which come in packets found on counters the of many of my neighborhood foodstores, are my current favorite snack.  I have tried lots of other flavored peanut butters, like ones made by Peanut Butter & Co. and Better ‘n Peanut Butter.  In fact, the latter’s banana blend made a nice addition to my apple cobbler a few days ago.  But Justin’s is number one on my list at the moment.

One of the reasons I put Justin ahead of the others is packaging.  Nobody else sells nut butter in a packet.  It’s so clever!  In this day and age, when we are so conscious of portion control, it is perfect to open up a Justin packet and have just enough chocolate hazelnut butter to spread on a nice multi-grain bread for the perfect snack!  With the other company’s products, you have to commit to buying and using a whole jar.  To Better ‘n Peanut Butter’s credit, their products do stay creamy for weeks in the refrigerator, never getting dried out or rock hard the way regular peanut butter does.  But having a whole jar of this yummy stuff on hand is more temptation than I can handle.

Justin’s is dairy free, too! (as are Peanut Butter & Co.’s and Better ‘n Peanut Butter’s products)  This is so important because we dairy allergic folks have been looking for an alternative to that popular snack spread, Nutella (Nutella is made with skim milk and whey).  With these new nut spreads, I think we have found it!

This new explosion of flavored nut butters takes me back to my childhood in the 1970s, when Koogle, a similar flavored peanut butter came out.  Koogle came in 4 flavors: chocolate, vanilla, banana and cinnamon.  My brothers and I convinced my parents to buy Koogle, and we ate up those first jars in no time.  The second time we got Koogle, our parents restricted us to just having one sandwich of one flavor per day.  So I got up in the middle of the night and snuck into the kitchen, pried open one of the cabinets, and quietly ate several spoonfuls of each of the flavors.  Disobeying was never so delicious!