Eat Arkansas

I had them once years ago in South Carolina. They're pretty repulsive. No taste, really. Just mushy.

I'll pass on the boiled goobers, thank you.

Roasted peanuts are mostly a vehicle for salt.

I can't really speak to boiled peanuts, but it reminds me of two of my dad's favorite road trip snacks:

1. Peanut patties - those horrible looking PINK conglomorations of peanut and whatever makes them stick together.

2. Peanuts in your coke - my dad often buys a bag of roasted peanuts and dumps them in his coke (worked better in the glass bottles of yore).

When I told this trick to a friend (a very, very young friend) she said she'd never heard of it but had heard of Skittles in your Sprite. WHAT? She's probably never had chocolate gravy or cornbread and milk (sweet or butter). :)

Boiled peanuts -- what an abomination! I'd sooner try a Kool-Aid Dill than eat boiled peanuts again. What starving family came up with that?

Now, to hijack the thread for a moment, what happened to that guy who planned to redevelop the coolest building in the Rivermarket District (the one that's set back off the street, linked by a walkway to the sidewalk) to open up a restaurant with a big open grill and he'd even cook the meat brought to him by customers? I want a job there manning a grill.

Several years ago I accompanied a friend to Georgia to visit a grandson. While out and about with him, he wanted to get a bag of hot boiled peanuts. My freind refused to let him eat them while still hot and told him to wait until they cooled. Unfortunately, that apparently was the wrong thing to do, because after they cooled they were totally inedible -- mushy, bland, yuch. I really don't know if eating them hot would have helped that much at all.

I have Mississippi friends who swear by boiled peanuts. I'd never tried them until last summer, when I was attending a blues festival in Mississippi.

What a disappointment. As I told my Dad, "They figured out the one way in the world to ruin a peanut".

And no, to answer the last question, eating them hot doesn't help. Unless mushy, bland, yuck, and hot is good.

They're big in Charleston and South Carolina, too. We had them offered almost everywhere we went. They grew on us.

My experience with boiled peanuts is limited--my dad cooked them once when I was young, and I've had them in Charleston more recently. I tend to think of them more as peas than as nuts, and as such, similar to crowder peas and tastier than English peas. Peas should never be mushy.

There is an African dish of beef and peanut stew that is very tasty.