15 April 2005
Peanut Milk
Non-dairy milk-like beverages are pretty popular now. There's soy milk, rice milk, and almond milk, all of which are designed to taste just like milk.
Then there's peanut milk, a frankly peanut-flavored beverage invented by the owners of the K K Cafe, a few blocks from my apartment. Another Lower Haight pal told me about this, and now I pick up a jug whenever I pass the cafe. Peanuts are tasty and nutritious! Which makes it a shame that peanut milk contains sugar. I'd drink more of it if it didn't.
Peanut milk comes in plain and strawberry varieties. Suspicious of strawberries and peanuts comingling, I stuck to the plain variety until yesterday. I asked for my usual jug of plain peanut milk, and the snaggle-toothed man behind the counter threw in a single serving of strawberry for free. "The flavor is like WHEW!," he raved. "You LOVE!" Okay, dude. I love.
Surprisingly, peanuts and strawberries do manage to overcome their differences in sweet, nutty harmony—but of course the strawberry flavor has even more sugar than the plain one does. Evaporated cane juice would be better. But does peanut milk need sweetening at all? It's hard to tell.
Apparently the Signs & Wonders company has a fancy new packaging design. It wouldn't surprise me if this means national distribution in the near future.