Each Christmas my brother used to give us several small glass jars of these wonderful salted peanuts cooked and packaged by First United Methodist Church in Mt. Olive, NC. The church sold these peanuts as a fundraiser to support their charitable outreach into the community. It meant you could enjoy some of the most delicious peanuts ever while supporting a very good cause.
The magazine OUR STATE recently had an article about this Methodist Church’s peanut venture and it reminded me how delicious those peanuts are. I emailed the church to see if I could order some and got a reply back quite promptly telling me that they were sold out for the year— thanks to the article in OUR STATE. I was happy for the Church but sad to miss out on the peanuts.
Their peanuts are made extra crunchy by a process called blister frying, which apparently originated in eastern North Carolina. First, the peanuts are blanched, or boiled in water. Then, when they are still wet, they are dropped in a deep fryer, causing their skin to blister. It’s this process that gives them their very special and somewhat addictive crunch. Plus they have just the right amount of salt. Maybe not the healthiest of snacks but not the worst either.
When I was growing up it was a well-known thing to pour a snack-sized pack of salted peanuts into your bottle of Coca-Cola. I did it a few times but I never cared for it much. I am not a fan of slightly soggy peanuts (and no longer a fan of any soft drink really) but it was a “thing” and you had to do it at least once or twice just so you were part of the thing. I guess it was just something you did in case it really might make you cool.
A little research led me to discover that this “tradition” did indeed originate in the South and has been happening since the 1920’s. Some say it was so blue-collar workers or farmers who didn’t have a convenient place to wash their hands before having a snack, could just combine a cold coke and their snack size bag of salted peanuts without needing to wash up first (or after). Others suggest it was so you could have your two-ingredient snack in one hand and have the other hand free to smoke a cigarette. All I know is that if you were living in the South chances are you had done this at least once. It was like a snack rite of passage.
With or without an ice-cold Coke, peanuts are loved. Every year when my mother went to the NC State Fair she would bring home a bag of salted-in-the-shell peanuts that she and my Dad would enjoy. Shelling peanuts is a somewhat messy process if you do it indoors, but again, it is something that we Southerners did and enjoyed, messy or not.
I remember that you could (and still can) buy a bag of peanuts in their shell at a baseball game. As a baby, my father used to woo me to sleep singing my favorite song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Remember the lyric “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks” ? That song was written in 1908 and baseball fans still sing that song and still buy a bag of salted in the shell peanuts to enjoy during the seventh inning stretch.
There was also the Pigeon Man on Capital Square in downtown Raleigh, NC that sold bags of roasted peanuts in their shells that you could buy to feed the pigeons (and squirrels) in the Square. Of course, you would feed yourself a few of those deliciously hot peanuts too. I wonder what happened to the Pigeon Man? Or did we call him the Peanut Man? I don’t remember but I do remember him always being in the very same spot at the top of Fayetteville Street.
Tom and I have on occasion ordered peanuts from Hubs (a Virginia company) and we recently noticed that The Fresh Market sells Hubs peanuts now. The truth is peanuts are not my favorite in the nut family. I am more of a pecan fan. And yes, I pronounce it correctly: pee-kan! We also had a period when a friend of Tom’s in Australia would send us a box filled with various varieties of macadamia nuts each year. Oh my. Now those were delicious indeed! Yes, we are definitely nut lovers!
Of course, most of us know that peanuts are not really a true nut but a legume. Peanuts are a closer relative to lentils and soybeans than to other nuts. But they are also usually far less expensive than most tree nuts and still pack a similar protein punch.
There won’t be any Methodist peanuts in our stockings here at our house this year. That’s just one more way I will miss my sweet brother as Christmas arrives.
I have oatmeal about three times a week. Have never tried Bob's but we like his products.
I related to every bit of this post...always try to by 'church peanuts' and I LOVED peanuts in an 8 ounce bottled coke. Introduced it to my kids...one of the few junk foods allowed in their youth.
thanks for the memories..ox