Peanut Butter

WASHINGTON - Jeffrey Almer's 72-year-old mother, Shirley, died in December from salmonella poisoning. "Cancer couldn't kill her, but peanut butter did," said Almer, whose mother ate tainted peanut butter in a Minnesota rehabilitation center where she was being treated for a urinary tract infection. With a visibly controlled sense of anger, Almer told a hushed congressional committee yesterday that, the day before his mother was supposed to return home, doctors unexpectedly gave her just hours to live.

To show students that doing well can bring them recognition, the Citizens' Advisory Committee of Quarterfield Elementary School has asked The Sun to help publicize its student of the week. Winners of the honor must write about themselves.Hi, my name is Kyle Franklin. I am 10 years old. I attend Quarterfield Elementary School in Glen Burnie.In my spare time, I surf the Internet. I also play soccer during recess with my friends. I enjoy hanging out with my family. I have an older brother. I also have a pet cat named Banjo.

Crabtree & Evelyn -- maker of those fragrant bath products -- has come out of the boudoir. Now, the Massachusetts-based company has cooked up a line of items for the kitchen.Aroma sprays in four "flavors" send mists of salad greens, gingered orange, pastries or cranberry wafting through the house, even if you haven't cooked all week. And when you do put on an apron, odor diffusers -- in the form of small candles -- cover up unpleasant food odors, and the Fruit & Vegetable Wash removes wax and pesticide residue from produce.

Lunch time at Carrolltowne Elementary's cafeteria in Eldersburg finds Tyler Haught in his own peanut-free zone. So severely allergic is the 6-year-old child to peanuts that even a taste of the ubiquitous legume can have him gasping for breath in seconds.He wears a medallion around his neck that warns he has "anaphylactic reaction to peanuts and all peanut products." Anaphylaxis is a condition of hypersensitivity to proteins or other substances. The symptoms, including swelling, respiratory distress and collapse of circulation, can be fatal.

* Item: Ms. Desserts Oops Products* What you get: 10-12 slices* Cost: $10 to $12* Preparation time: 8 to 12 hours to defrost* Review: These marked-down products at the Ms. Desserts outlet stores in Woodlawn and Timonium are rejects from the retail line that typically cost $2 to $6 less and often have very few flaws. The pecan pie we bought had a few small cracks in the crust and the filling sagged in the middle, but the taste was first-rate. Though the pie resembled shoofly more than an authentic pecan, it was great warmed and then topped with ice cream.

Excerpt of a Saturday New York Times editorialREPORTS of some schools adopting peanut-free zones in lunchrooms and even total peanut butter bans may sound like a freakish health fad, but there have been rare cases where children who were severely allergic to peanuts have died after coming into contact with peanuts in school. With increased reports of food allergies among children, the impetus to protect the susceptible is understandable.About 7 percent of children have some kind of food allergy, with effects that can range from mild itching to traumatic shock or the closing of breathing passages.

The table looks like any other inside Ilchester Elementary School's cafeteria: a dozen first-graders chattering and feasting on shiny red apples, yogurt, cheese-flavored crackers and pizza slices.But one childhood staple is missing from this corner of the lunchroom: peanuts."I don't like to bring peanut butter. It makes me feel like I'm sick," says Julia Millard, a 6 1/2 -year-old first-grader at Ilchester's "Peanut Butter Free" table, meant for children who are allergic to peanuts and peanut products.

The all-time favorite sandwich of school lunches, peanut butter, sends children such as Andrew Graff, 6, into an allergic reaction so severe that it can swell shut eyelids and airways.Peanuts and peanut butter have become an increasingly frequent food allergy that has doctors at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions immersed in studying the ubiquitous legumes, and parents such as Christine Graff of Hampstead struggling to keep them away from their school-age children.The anecdotal evidence at Andrew's school, Spring Garden Elementary in Hampstead, reflects the nationwide increase in peanut allergies.

Sixth-graders at Sykesville Middle School reached out to "people we don't know" when they converted their classroom into a peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich assembly line to help the homeless."

So many Asian recipes have ingredient lists longer than the great wall of China, but today's Peanut-Sesame Noodles is a streamlined version that will work for speedy weeknight meals.This dinner is an extremely easy execution of the noodles you may have enjoyed in Chinese restaurants or take-outs, which combines basic pantry items with pre-cooked chicken and a few vegetables found prepared in the produce department. You may want to add additional steamed vegetables for an optional side dish.

Ruth Bosley from Parkton was looking for a recipe for peanut butter bread. I received a recipe from Anna Childs of Northampton, Mass., for a peanut butter and pumpkin bread that I thought sounded interesting and different. Bosley said the recipe came from a co-worker some years ago. She said the unusual combination of peanut butter and pumpkin is delicious and she enjoys baking and sharing these lovely loaves with friends and family. This is a quick bread that comes together in minutes.

WASHINGTON - Jeffrey Almer's 72-year-old mother, Shirley, died in December from salmonella poisoning. "Cancer couldn't kill her, but peanut butter did," said Almer, whose mother ate tainted peanut butter in a Minnesota rehabilitation center where she was being treated for a urinary tract infection. With a visibly controlled sense of anger, Almer told a hushed congressional committee yesterday that, the day before his mother was supposed to return home, doctors unexpectedly gave her just hours to live.

It is a good cookie. But is it worth a million bucks? Nope. It is too sweet. That is what I decided after tasting a version of the peanut-butter cookie that Carolyn Gurtz, a 59-year-old Gaithersburg homemaker, baked to win the 43rd Pillsbury Bake-Off and $1 million in prize money yesterday in Dallas. Her winning recipe for Double Delight Peanut Butter Cookies takes a package of refrigerated Pillsbury dough and hypes it up. Gurtz adds extra nuts, peanut butter, two types of sugar and some cinnamon.

Because peanut butter often is the go-to grub for school lunches, we decided to put it center stage in a tasting of natural, crunchy peanut butters. Emphasis on natural. The eight contenders' ingredient lists included just peanuts, and maybe salt and / or peanut oil. Unlike regular peanut butter, these nonhydrogenated spreads are devoid of sugar as well as additives that prevent the oil from separating from the solids. This means that oil rises to the top and the contents have to be stirred prior to first use. Our panel was seeking true peanut flavor with a nut-studded yet spreadable texture.

I have finally figured out what's wrong with this country. It's the frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We have now reached the point in our national cultural evolution where a significant number of adults do not have time or interest in making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their children, so they buy them - $2.89 for four little, round PBJs with crimped edges - out of the ever-expanding frozen food section at the supermarket. The other day, at the Charles Street Safeway in Baltimore, a little old lady stood back near the dairy section, handing out samples of a product I have seen but refused to acknowledge - Smucker's Uncrustables.

You spend your life cooking up a theory to explain everything from Cold War nuclear strategies to the prices at Best Buy. And what do you get for it? The Nobel Prize. Not bad. But wait, there's more! Thomas Schelling also had a peanut butter sandwich named for him at the University of Maryland. Two aspiring dietitians who are doing their food service rotation in UM dining halls had loftier fare in mind when they proposed naming a sandwich for the newly minted Nobel laureate. But when Anne Murken and Peter Williams asked the 84-year-old UM economics professor what he likes to eat, he answered, "Peanut butter."

Jean Reed from Santa Rosa, Calif., was looking for a recipe for peanut-butter cookies that included orange juice in the ingredients. Norma Purlington of Rapid City, S.D., sent in a recipe for peanut-butter cookies that she has been making for many years that uses orange juice. She says it is one of her family's favorite cookies. These cookies look and taste much like a traditional peanut-butter cookie, but they do have just a hint of orange that makes them extra-special. Recipe requests Gail Rosenthal from Absecon, N.J., is looking for a recipe for German streusel cake.

Sometimes the simplest dishes raise the most fuss. So it is with cold sesame noodles. For years I toiled without success to find just the right zing, only to find the answer not in pricey tahini (sesame-seed pastes) but in plain old peanut butter. Admittedly, the peanut butter in question wasn't Skippy or Jif. Rather it was a high-quality, all-natural product. And it was jazzed up by the late Barbara Tropp, a San Francisco author and restaurateur, with plenty of raw garlic, sugar and hot red chile paste.

Item: Dippin' Snax What you get: 1 snack Cost: About $1.75 Nutritional content: Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jelly - 270 calories, 12 grams fat, 3 grams saturated fat, 250 milligrams sodium, 36 grams carbohydrate, 21 grams sugars Preparation time: Open package and eat Review: Remember when you were young and peanut butter and jelly was one of life's most perfect foods? Well, it still is for many of today's kids. Yet they're bombarded with snacks that offer frosting, sprinkles, faux-fruit bits and all kinds of other not-very-nutritious ingredients.

What makes a sandwich good? Is it the mayonnaise and mustard spread evenly on two slices of bread? Or is it the meat and cheese piled high? For me, it's two parts cheese and one part meat that really gets my stomach growling. With a new school year starting, sandwiches are a popular choice for lunchtime. But whichever way you entice your tummy, and wherever you eat, there are plenty of ways to make your sandwich zing. RecipeSource.com suggests the following can be combined for tasty meals: Peanut butter combines well with honey, sliced bananas, grated carrots, raisins, applesauce, bacon bits, cream cheese, jam, toasted wheat germ, chopped dates or any combination of the above.