Buy This: The Best Peanut Butter

This is as good as it gets.

This is the image that led me down a path ending with the best peanut butter in the world:

It was from a T Magazine feature from 2012 of Great Lake Pizza, photographed by Todd Selby. At the time, Great Lake was being heralded as the best pizza in America by the people that declare these kinds of things. (For what it’s worth, it’s closed now.)

When I saw this image, I noted the little jars of peanut butter on the middle shelf, but couldn’t quite make out the brand. I could see what looked like “Cream,” but not much more. Based on what I had read about the owner of this place (exacting, deliberate, perfectionist) I believed if this was a peanut butter good enough to sell on the shelf of a pizzeria (not a place you might find peanut butter), it must be pretty fuckin’ special.

Up to that point I had been enjoying the “grind your own” peanut butter from Whole Foods. It checked the box for a natural product (free of weird oils and sugar) but it always seemed a little dusty, a touch stale.

I did some online sleuthing - searching for “cream peanut butter” - and the internets delivered to me what remains my favorite pantry staple:

Cream-Nut Peanut Butter, manufactured by Koeze Company for almost 100 years. The label, which is resolutely old fashioned and very much antithetical to the slick branding of today’s direct-to-consumer product wasteland, convinced me: this must be damn good. Just Virginia peanuts and a little sea salt. And the name is so bad (but also - so good?), they must be CONFIDENT.

Here’s the deal: if you are a peanut butter fan, this is the really the only option you should even consider. Anyone who knows me (or any longtime reader of this newsletter) understands I’m an evangelist for this brand. If someone tells me they “love” peanut butter but they don’t eat this one, I immediately stop listening. Accept no substitutes.

We eat our Cream-Nut in the morning, generously spooned into our overnight oats. In the afternoon, I like it with a banana as a filling snack. And every night, we eat it with dates for a much better (and extremely hippy) version of a Reese’s Cup.

Recently my wife looked back at our order history over the last decade we've been ordering it (directly from Koeze) and our consumption amounts to one jar every two days. We order a case every week and a half, roughly. This amounts to literally thousands of dollars in peanut butter over the years.

We wager we’re among Cream-Nut’s best customers. We must be! The brand has never reached out to acknowledge our consistent business or my many posts on social media, and I love that. They are old school, old fashioned, and they just keep their heads down. I yearn for the day when I have the confidence to just do what I do and remain oblivious to how it is being perceived by the outside world.

What are you waiting for?

Go buy some.