Glacier Peanuts

[Magicman]

Since I will be "home bound" for a week due to this glaciated weather moving in tonight;
 

I decided to thaw out a bag of boiled peanuts. 

[Magicman]

I have been warming and eating a nice handful each day.  Maybe 2 more day's left. 

[twar]

I love peanuts, but I grew up just north of the "boiled peanut line" in NC, so they are not my thing. But I have friends who come back from the beach (NC, SC and GA) with (big) bags of boiled peanuts.

[WV Sawmiller]

  When I grew up in N. Fla just below the Ala line every small town had a "Peanut boy" or two who would walk around town, especially at special events and sell small brown bags of roasted (Parched as we called them) and boiled peanuts. I think they used to sell them for 10-15 cents per bag.

    My buddy in the 7th & 8th grade was Peanut Hamrick. He and his younger brother would sell peanuts in our area. I'd sometimes get him to bring me a bag to school but I had to be careful as he would eat them all up from me if I was not careful. His parents ran a local fruit and vegetable stand.

    I asked him one time how they sold green peanuts year round as we only cooked them at harvest time when green peanuts were available.  Peanut told me they just boiled up a bunch of dry ones. It might have taken longer to cook them but they were actually better than most green ones I ever ate as they had no "pops" or under developed shells.

    I was in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and the peanut boys over there would have a thin steel wok filled with salt. They would take a 1 gallon sized can and punch holes in it to bake a brazier and fill it with charcoal and heat the salt and add shelled dry peanuts and cook them in the salt. They would sell them in front of stores and busy businesses. They would roll up a sheet from an old computer print-out and dip the peanuts out with a slotted spoon shaking off as much salt back into the wok as they could. These peanuts tasted just like the canned salted peanuts you buy in the grocery store. A print-out roll of peanuts cost one Saudi riyal or 26.6 cents at the time.

  In Cameroon and other parts of Africa women and boys sold roasted, shelled and de-husked peanuts by the whiskey bottle full. I never saw their roasting barrels but heard they had a barrel on a rotisserie and turned it over a fire to roast the peanuts. You would sometimes see the women rolling the peanuts in their hands to remove the husks. They would blow or let the wind remove the thin husks. (We do not need to discuss or concern ourselves with how clean the women's hands were.) They were very good and made great trail mix when raisins or dried cranberries were added. The women would gather at busy intersections and sell the 1/5 whiskey bottles filled with peanuts. They would have a small rag and a wire that looked like an old coat hanger and would drip the rag in the run-off water or local mudhole and thoroughly wash the bottles. They would then fill the bottle with peanuts and use the wire to push the peanuts around to fill every crevice. They would fell the bottle including the neck to the point they could not get another peanut in the bottle then they would screw the original metal cap back on. When they did not have bottles to wash or peanuts to pack they sat around and used the wires as picks to do each other's hair.

    I had paid 1,000 cfas (West African currency - Central African Francs used by several west/centra African countries) or about one dollar IIRC for a bottle of peanuts then one of my local workers told me they normally sold for about 500-600 cfas and I was paying "White guy" prices.

    I never knew that peanuts came from Africa till I got there but they were a staple food and would be ground and added to soup and stews and such.

[Magicman]

I just finish my "morning bait" of boiled peanuts from that bag pictured above.  One minute in the microwave and they are hot-n-ready.    

[RPF2509]

Boiled peanuts always reminded me of chewing salty wet cardboard.  Never developed a taste for them and considered them a waste of a good snack.  Now roasted peanuts - salt or no salt- are another side of the coin. I can't stop eating them until they are all gone.

[Raider Bill]

Well now I have the desire for some boiled peanuts.
Used to be a local guy that sold them but he disappeared.
Need a new source.