Peanut-butter consumption has increased more than 10 percent since 2001, with Americans eating an average of three pounds of peanut butter per person a year.
Georgia - the largest peanut-producing state, where more than half of this country's peanuts are grown - had a bumper crop last year, up 15 percent from 2004, according to the National Peanut Board. In Texas, the second-largest peanut-producing state, the crop also increased last year, by 16 percent.
Although peanut butter is associated with kids, adults consume far more of it than kids do each year.
Now 32, Lee Zalben was so obsessed with peanut butter while growing up in Philadelphia that, after graduating from Vassar (with a bachelor's degree in urban studies) and moving to New York for an advertising career, he chucked it all to become an entrepreneur and open a peanut butter sandwich shop in Greenwich Village in 1998.
Today, the ever-popular Peanut Butter & Co. restaurant offers more than 20 variations on the PB-sandwich theme, along with a variety of peanut butter-based snacks and desserts. About 5,000 stores now sell the six flavors of his delicious natural peanut butters (Smooth Operator, Crunch Time, Cinnamon Raisin Swirl, and Dark Chocolate Dreams). In his recently released The Peanut Butter & Co. Cookbook (Quirk Books, 2005), Zalben spreads his joy of peanut butter in 80 gooey, tempting recipes, ranging from Peanut Butter Scones and Thai Peanut Soup to Cold Sesame Noodles and Peanut Butter Brittle.
"You can never have too much peanut butter. The thing I remember most from my childhood was that when my mom would bring out the peanut butter jar and a loaf of bread, I got to feel like a cook for the first time and make my own lunch," Zalben recalls of his experience as a 4-year-old.
"One of my favorite sandwiches now is crunchy peanut butter with apricot jam on wheat bread," he adds.
