Peanut Butter Anyone?

For those that didn't know (I didn't) Houston, Texas has the ONLY Latter-Day Saint Food Storage Packaging Plant for Peanut Butter in the world. It's open and running Mon-Sat, 24 hours a day. No one is paid to work there, it is all volunteer from the local Members of the LDS Church. Cool eh!

Well, I got the joy of volunteering. Jared and I were going to do it together but we'd have had to leave so early that it just didn't logically work out for a babysitter. So I went on my own. It was such fun to work with the other members of the Ward.

I got to sort through roasted peanuts, taste testing if we wanted, plus fishing out dirt, rocks, or the random corn kernel. Then I got to screw on the lids (not a hard job). Scariest part was putting the empty bottles in line to be filled up with Peanut Butter. The Peanut Butter is hot when it first comes out, and looks a bit like Butterscotch Pudding. I was so nervous I'd miss a spot for the jar and have an entire 16 oz of Peanut Butter splotch down all over the floor and then they'd have to shut it all down just to clean up my mess. But luckily that never happened. I also got to stick on the Peanut Butter Sticker Labels, and help package them into boxes of 12.

All in all, it was A LOT of work. We were there for 4 hours. We did get to take breaks whenever we wanted and have as many Peanut Butter and Jelly/Honey Sandwiches that we could eat, even free cold milk. It was a lot of fun, but I think I'll let Jared do it next time.

So grand total we made 5,630 jars of Peanut Butter in one night. And I didn't get home till 11:30. Definitely Jared's turn next time.