Houston's Mormon peanut butter partnership

On the north side of Houston, along FM 1960, you might start to smell the slight aroma of roasted peanuts wafting through the air. Its unexpected source: the welfare services complex for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Inside, giant white bags of peanuts — grown by the church in Pearsall — wait to be roasted, crushed and made into the good stuff: creamy, rich peanut butter.The peanut butter cannery is a part of the Mormon Church's worldwide humanitarian effort to provide food for increasing numbers of needy families they serve. The facility has partnered with the Houston Food Bank to make and distribute 95,000 jars of peanut butter a year."The church offered the plant, the trained operators, the jars, the lids, and we print a special Houston Food Bank peanut butter label," said Patte Comstock, the church's volunteer coordinator and director of public affairs. "We also provide the three dry ingredients that are mixed with peanuts to make peanut butter: salt, sugar and a powdered oil.... The requirement of the food bank is that they fund the raw peanuts for their peanut butter."