Southern Breeze 2007 Summer Issue - (Page 45) N IN NORTHWEST FLORIDA, BOILED PEANUTS ARE NOT JUST A ROADSIDE SNACK…THEY ARE A PASSION! Nuts going Not long ago I moved back to the South after having lived in Washington, DC for about 10 years. Eager to get back to my Southern roots, I vowed to put back in my life all the traditions and experiences that made being from the South great. Almost immediately upon setting foot in the Florida Panhandle I noticed something I had never seen before—the phenomenon of boiled peanuts. What’s up with boiled peanuts? They were everywhere. I shocked and astounded everyone I met when I confessed that, yes, while having grown up in rural Alabama, I never knew about, much less tasted, a boiled peanut. The very thought I did not find appetizing. In the list of revered Southern traditions, I am told that boiled peanuts rank right up there with cheese grits, catfish, and smoked mullet dip. (Personally I think eating grits with catfish is a Florida thing.) They seem to have a mystique of their own—a sort of “take-life-as-it-comes” kind of aura. In fact, the boiled peanut is so important to the Southern tradition that in May 2006 South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford named the boiled peanut the state’s official snack! I hit the road, specifically some country roads that run along the I-10 corridor, to do a little hands-on research. Whether I felt drawn to the boiled peanut or not, I felt an obligation as a Southerner to educate myself. And what I found more astounding is that there are as many opinions about how to cook them and how to eat them as there are peanuts in the world. I realized I had missed something important in my upbringing and that I needed to make up for lost time. story by JUNE DOLLAR | photography by KARIM SHAMSI-BASHA and STUART HOLT Summer 2007 45
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