P.B. Loco: Are You Loco for Peanut Butter?

As many of you know, I use the micro-blogging service, Twitter. Whether that makes me a "twit" or not, I'll leave up to you. A couple of months ago I started following, and being followed by, a peanut butter company named P.B. Loco. Being a lover of peanut butter, I'm definitely a member of their target audience. Out of the kindness of their hearts, and with the hope of a review, they sent me three jars of their product. They even let me choose the flavors.

You read that right - flavors of peanut butter. That's what P.B. Loco does. They make flavored peanut butter. They've got some pretty good ones, too.

Advertising themselves as the "adult peanut butter," because of the intensity of some of their flavor combinations, they say, "P.B.Loco is peanut butter for adults who already know the scintillating pleasures of cold microbrews, left-of-the dial bands and independent movies. It's for grownups who aren't completely grown up and who are averse to button-down shirts, closed-toed sandals, and life without a dog."

Boy howdy, can I relate. Not in all the details mind you, but I certainly enjoy good peanut butter and new food experiences.

In addition to the good ol' creamy and crunchy peanut butter varieties, P.B. Loco offers some flavors I would have expected - Jungle Banana (peanut butter with banana), Dark Chocolate Duo (peanut butter with dark chocolate), and CocoBanna (chocolate and banana peanut butter, duh) - but also some I didn't expect - Asian Curry Spice (great for kicking up my peanut butter pasta) and Sun-Dried Tomato, for example.

Wanting to have a baseline to judge from, I requested a jar of their creamy peanut butter, as well as a jar of the Asian Curry Spice and the Sun-Dried Tomato. I've been playing with them ever since. Until the peanut butter ran out, anyway. Now I'll have to get some more so I can keep experimenting.

All three of these flavors were great on sandwiches. I particularly liked pairing the Sun-Dried Tomato peanut butter with green pepper jelly. The Asian Curry Spice seemed best with honey or apricot jam. Their regular creamy peanut butter was great, too. My wife said it best after she stuck her finger in the jar to get a very-large second taste, "It's kind of addicting."

Theirs isn't the only commercially available flavored peanut butter I've tried, by the way. The others I've tried just aren't as good as P.B. Loco.

I do have a few problems with P.B. Loco peanut butter, though. One is the inclusion of hydrogenated oils. Much of what was thought to be wrong with hydrogenated oils (trans-fats) has been debunked by scientific studies when it comes to peanut butter. P.B. Loco is not lying when they say their peanut butter has no trans-fats. Still, there's a part of me that wonders about artificial hydrogenation, anyway.

The price isn't all that thrilling, either. $6.95 for a 16 oz. jar of peanut butter seems a little steep to me. That's the price through their website, by the way. To be fair, I found a few varieties for sale at a local Target store for about $1.50 less than the website price.

One other problem I'm hoping they'll fix is with the Sun-Dried Tomato flavor. The idea blew my mind until I discovered that tomato and peanut butter sandwiches are an old staple from out of the South. I loved the flavor, but I had some trouble with the sun-dried tomatoes being really hard at times. Small rocks that crack your teeth hard. It would be a shame if they didn't figure out a way to fix that, and I'm pretty sure they could. (I'm planning on posting a recipe for peanut butter, tomato and feta canapés that uses their Sun-Dried Tomato peanut butter in the next week, or so.)

So what's the bottom line? Would I buy their peanut butter? You bet. It's flavorful, has great mouth feel, and appeals to the part of me that loves to try new flavors. It's also just darned good peanut butter. The high price means I probably won't be buying very often, though. Still, you can bank on the fact that I'll be trying, and enjoying, their other peanut butter flavors in the future.

3 zucchinis (If it wasn't for the price, I'd have given it four.)