I should title this post, “the cursed food processors,” but then you wouldn’t get to know what I was making!  This month’s Daring Cook’s challenge was to make a nut butter and use it in a dish.  Well, nut butters mean one needs a food processor.  I thought this would be a great challenge to do at home in the US visiting my parents (if I’m visiting can I still call it home?), because I knew that they would enjoy the flavors I was thinking of for this month’s dish.

Well, I get there and find that my parents’ puppy had decided that the cord of the food processor looked appetizing, and bit the cord right off of the machine!  It’s quite hard to run a food processor if you have no way of plugging it into anything.  Ok, so no homemade nut butters this time.  Instead, I went to my nearest health store corporate giant and picked up some cashew butter.  Why cashews?  Well, everyone in my family loves them, and peanut butter is boring

This week I had thought about making my own cashew butter now that I am back en Suisse, but again with the cursed food processors!  There was a mighty wind event the other day, and silly us left our windows open in our apt. all day.  We’d gotten into the habit of this because it’s been so freaking hot lately – and trust me, you learn a totally different definition of hot when there is no A/C to be found, especially when your office faces the afternoon sun.  I melt into a sweaty sticky puddle on a regular basis.  It wasn’t until we left work that I thought things could be a problem.  After all, tree branches don’t normally float.  We got home to find so much stuff all over the floor of our apt., including the food processor!! The lid is cracked and in pieces.  gahhhhh!  Well, there goes making any nut butters this month.  At least the wind kept our stuff inside the apt., I half expected to find our life’s belongings strewn out all over the street below.

So jarred cashew butter it is for this month.  I’m ok with this, it was organic and quite tasty.  As long as your’e also ok with my store-bought nut butter, onto the challenge!

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Continue reading Daring Cooks go Nuts! Grilled Kabobs with Cashew Butter Sauce