As I’ve no doubt mentioned hundreds of times, I LOVES me some peanut butter. Indeed, after discovering sweet potato toasties, I think I’ve eaten my two favourite foods together (peanut butter and potatoes) every damn day since!

However, the problem with peanut butter is that regular old Kraft PB is delicious (and super cheap!)…

….but full of crap….

Alternatively, the just-peanuts, non-homogenized stuff is expensive, overly dense, and invariably covered with a thick layer of oil…

As I was trying to figure out a solution to this conundrum, I remembered a recipe for a peanut-tofu-raisin spread from a vegetarian cooking class I took in 1991, so I dug up my old notebook from the course (and had another laugh at the line, “Look for quinois–a hard-to-find, but hip new grain,” and, yes, I did spell “quinoa” like that!).

Alas, I could not find the recipe, but had the vague recollection that it was one part tofu to two parts peanut butter and a quarter cup of raisins, so I thought I’d give it a try. I decided to replace the raisins with medjool dates though because they’re more nutritionally dense.

The idea is that you get the flavour of peanut butter, without the caloric density. Plus, the tofu smooths out and kind of homogenizes the spread. The water makes it spreadable, and the dates and maple syrup give it a bit of sweetness!

Here’s what I came up with! I ended up adding water because it was just too damn dense.  The medjool dates added sweetness, but not quite enough, so I added a bit of maple syrup. You may raise your eyebrows at the salt and the veg broth powder, but when I tasted it, I realized it needed a bit more of an umami flavour…even with the sweetness.

I quite like it, and when I got James to taste it, he pronounced it Peanut-Butter Light, so here we go!

Healthy Peanut-Butter Light

• 700 grams all-natural peanut butter (just peanuts)
• 300 grams soft tofu
• 6 pitted medjool dates (can add more depending on how sweet you like it)
• 1 2/3 cups water
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1 TBS vanilla
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 TBS Knorr vegetable broth powder

Blend in the Vitamix until everything is smooth.

The calorie count on this spread is about 50 per TBS, while natural peanut butter is about 100 calories per TBS (the crappy processed stuff I love is similar), so this new spread results is quite the caloric savings!  This recipe makes a couple of kilos of the spread, so if you give it a try, you should have enough to see you out!

And the song of the day is called “Little Stevie”–a song written and performed by a family friend for my brother, Steve, who died on New Year’s Day after a long illness.