Photo by Ken Murawski
Krystina Murawski was doing just fine as a communications consultant at Swiss Re in Armonk when her best friend sent a text that would set her career — her life, really — on a whole new course. “She wanted to start a food truck, and I thought this would be the perfect time to try making my own peanut butter, because we could keep each other accountable,” recalls the 32-year-old Hartsdale resident who grew up in Cortlandt Manor.
Always obsessed with peanut butter and never one to sit idle (“I run myself pretty hard”), Murawski embarked on a mission to find the perfect peanut. “Every night after work, I went looking for peanuts,” she says. “I tried over 25 types and gave my food processor a workout.”
By the next text, a month or so later, Murawski’s friend concluded that food trucking was off the table, but “I was already 45 batches in!”
Murawski had been spending every free moment experimenting with different peanuts (shelled, unshelled, with skins, without skins) and different oils, trying to get taste and texture just right. “Peanut butter should embody that subtle balance of sweet and salty.”
When she dipped her pinky into her 100th recipe, she knew she’d found “the one,” and Noomi peanut butter was born. “Noomi means ‘new me,’ and it’s about pursuing your passion and following your dreams,” she explains.
Noomi is made with clean, sustainable ingredients: naturally sweet, organic, dry-roasted peanuts from North Carolina; organic Deglet Noor dates, for an added note of sweetness; nutrient-rich grapeseed oil, peanut oil, and Atlantic sea salt.
Less than three years after that fateful text, Noomi is on the shelves in 31 states, six countries, and locally (at Wegman’s and Green’s Natural Foods in Scarsdale, Yorktown, Mount Kisco, and Briarcliff), as well as in specialty food shops across the Hudson Valley.
Murawski hasn’t given up her day job, but she has graduated to a commercial kitchen in Mamaroneck, where she spends almost the entire weekend relying on “free help” from her parents or a friend. “It’s hard to balance it all, but I kinda thrive on it. I give 110 percent or nothing.”
As much as she hopes people enjoy her peanut butter, Murawski really hopes they adopt the Noomi mindset: “Doing what you love is possible, so long as you stay nuts!”
Noomi Peanut Butter
www.noomibrand.com
