Boiled Peanuts
I moved to Florida when I was very young. I was too young to know
that anything was different. I hadn't had time to learn traditional
family foods, and processed foods were soon to dominate the
destruction of the actual culture that we are now told is archaic if it
ever existed at all.
In the south there was still some culture left outside of the cities, and
in the spaces between. Traditional farmers are excellent at preserving
culture. They are tied to culture as they are tied to the land, and the
cycles.
Wow, heavy, what I really wanted to talk about when I started this
post, was... BOILED PEANUTS! you know, like the ones at the top of the
screen. My immediate family used to go, after church and find some
roadside stand on a rural Florida highway, and buy several paper bags
full of boiled peanuts. They were always salted more than would seem
necessary, but they were still not too salty.
The white paper bags were rolled down and made a sort of bowl for the
peanuts. The peanuts are boiled in the shell, in water 'salted to that of
the sea'. The inside of the peanuts soak up the salt water and swell, and
become like thick paste. I think that nothing short of trying them will
convince anyone of how good they are. At least when I was ten they
defied my expectations.
If you are allergic to peanuts, don't eat boiled peanuts.
They contain peanuts.
Cajun spicy Boiled peanut recipe
Boiled peanuts are one thing I miss about living in the South.
Sweet tea? Not so much.
When it's 97 degrees and 100% humidity, I don't mind iced tea that is slightly sweetened. As long as it is cold and hold the lemon if it's sweet.
In the south, there is only sweet tea. There are no degrees. They add the sugar to hot tea for maximum saturation.
Nestea, of course
I've had sweet tea that was more sugar than tea. I don't order it out anymore. Only unsweetened for me. When I make my own at home, I just put honey in it. And, as a native Floridian, I can say my family gatherings growing up and today always included a choice of sweet or unsweet tea. Of course, the sweet tea was the most popular choice. :)
I have definitely had some unappetizingly sweet tea never got a taste for unsweetened Nestea. That's why I took up drinking coffee. I haven't had sweet tea in probably 30 years. Drinking sweet things was more a thing when I was younger. I like my coffee black. Before I left Florida, I didn't know there was any other tea except Nestea and Earl Grey. I didn't know that you can make tea from any non-toxic plant, just add hot water.
Oh, Earl Grey. My dad used to have a cup of that at 8 pm sharp every evening for YEARS, from the time I was a kid until well after I was grown up and moved out of the house. It was part of his sacred nighty routine. I think it finally changed about a decade ago when he started dating the woman across the street from him, and she got him into doing new things.
I hope he's still getting his polyphenols.
Yes, we eat boiled peanuts in Thailand too!
Yes, I saw a Thai boiled peanut recipe on youtub when I was searching for the videos. It looked good.
Thanks for the comment.
I have roasted peanuts in the shell that I dropped some water on by accident, does that count? gonna munch on those, but paste, gonna have to try it, yes I've lived in Florida for almost a year, and now in South Texas for over 4, and haven't tried boiled peanuts yet :D
Keep your eye out on rural highways and state roads.
It's not precisely paste as much as extra stiff mashed potatoes, but still mushy and salty and flavorful.
Just asked if my wife had them ever and she's never left the south, she's probably too good for boiled peanuts.
I guess it's rural food as the farmers make them and sell them out of a mobile stand. The upper class people don't know what they're missing.
I'm from Florida, and my dad introduced me to boiled peanuts as a kid. They were heaven. I've loved them ever since, and still occasionally get some from a roadside stand, though they actually have them in bags in my local grocery store now.
I briefly worked at a roadside produce stand in college, between other, better gigs, and we had boiled peanuts there. A couple from up north came in, and they'd never heard of boiled peanuts and wanted to try them. The husband liked them, but the wife spit hers right back out again, declaring peanuts should not have that texture. Lol!
I've heard boiled peanuts referred to as the "caviar of the south."
Some people can't stand fish eggs either. If the were more affordable, I would eat them by the pound. I love boiled peanuts. There is so much food that Florida does better than anyone else.
Even if I wasn't a vegan, you'd be hard-pressed to get me to eat fish eggs. Seafood in general is just creepy to me. I want nothing to do with it.
Though I've expanded my palate considerably, beginning in college, and love things like Thai, Indian, Japanese, and Ethiopian food, I still think back extremely fondly on the old-fashioned southern cooking of my great-grandmother. She made the best peach cobbler, fresh biscuits, chicken and dumplings (before I became vegan, naturally), and chocolate cream pie. Ah, such wonderful culinary memories. :)
Life without sushi would be a sad, dim thing, for me. Caviar is a bit salty, but so are boiled peanuts.
My mother's mother was the German baker. I've eaten blackberry and raspberry cobbler till I thought I would never want it again, but it is just so good. She liked to bake Dutch food too. She also made the best cinnamon rolls and monkey bread. I shudder at the memory of how much sugar I've consumed, but I' probably do it all again, especially in the 1970's, with no GMOs and no glyphosate. If I had a time machine I would use it to go out for dinner.
An excellent use of a time machine if ever there was one, I say. :)
I like sushi, too, but I only order vegetarian sushi. Avocado sushi is my favorite, though a new sushi place in my town serves a kind of amazing tempura sweet potato sushi.
I love avocado, and all kinds of tempura, including sweet potato, especially Okinawan purple sweet potatoes (polyphenols and anthocyanin), though I try to avoid deep fried things these days.
Cucumber sushi is good, as is carrot sushi, but they aren't substantial enough to keep me full for long. Avocado has a nice, deep flavor, and keeps me full for a long time. So does the sweet potato.
Sweet potato is indispensable for resistant starch. I wonder if tempura boiled peanuts would be good.
one of my fondest memories as a kid was getting boiled peanuts from the side of the road. We have a place here (I'm in Florida as well) that has something like 8 or 9 different flavors that you can choose from. They mix them with a variety of spices and seasonings - some are ranch, some are super spicy, etc.
I knew I was not alone, or how could these guys stay in business?
The second video blow my mind. Never thought that they grow this way :D
wowwwww...
I suspect lots of people who have never seen them grow don't know. The only reason I do is that we grew some in our yard when I was a youngster, maybe six years old. I couldn't believe it, peanuts come out of the ground like potatoes? Crazy.
Yes, exactly: Crazy :D