Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Wherein a Connecticut Yankee learns of a southern delicacy...


ESPN's Don Barone visits South Carolina for some bass fishing event and runs into the one thing no self respecting southerner can pass by without stopping to get some....The Boiled Peanut.
Dona: "They a Southern delicacy. We boil them in salted water, and when they 'bout done we use a boat paddle to scoop them out of the tub and let them sit up on the paddle a bit before you bag 'em. Go ahead, EAT IT."

So I did.

You kind of squish them open — soundless peanuts — with the shell just kind of sticking to my finger like melted chocolate, and in what seemed like slow motion, put two of the three nuts in my mouth.
Don's take on the Southern staple?
I'm in South Carolina, what, maybe two hours, both Vic and Dona had mentioned I was a "long way from 'Ke-net-ta-kit' and I have in my mouth that same taste that you get when you do a header into a pond and come up with the bottom of the pond flooring stuck between your wisdom teeth.

I say nothing, in fact I'm afraid to move ANY mouth muscle fearing an involuntary swallow, either going down, or coming up.

And then Dona reaches under the counter AGAIN. "Here," she says while handing me a rather large paper towel…"they an acquired taste."
Apparently northern types can't handle the taste. Now if only we'd thought to deliver a sack of these to General Sherman at just the right moment we might still have a bunch of those old wooden buildings in Atlanta.
Oh there is some fishing in the article as well.
Photo credit: Don Barone

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