Boiled peanuts and Ice Cold Milk.
It's the only Combo I've found better than boiled peanuts and ice cold beer. I'm a milk lover too.
History of boiled peanuts...
Georgia is one of the primary peanut states. Dothan Alabama hearlds the National Peanut Festival, immediately after the harvest. In Oct, I believe. It's been a while.
Anyway, in Georgia, we are known for those planter peanuts. It's a specialty peanut of special size and moisture content, specificially planted and harvested for planter peanuts. If to big, they don't use them. So, over the last 20 years or so, many of us have "cheated". We find Valencia peanuts from New Mexico, which are much larger, almost twice the size of planters style peanuts. We like the bigger ones for boiling.
Then, some farmers around here, who love boiled peanuts said, "What the heck", and started bringing in just a little bit of seed, and would plant a half acre to acre of Valencia peanuts next to their 1000 acres of Planters, just so they could give to family and friends and boil some up. Today, it is rare we import from New Mexico. Farmers don't usually plant many unless they sell boiled peanuts commmercially, or in just about every other gas station around, this time of year.
One other thing. You don't just boil any ole peanut. You buy "Green" peanuts. No, not OD green. And they only last about two weeks before they start to dry out, and that's with slight refridgeration. Some say they can keep green peanuts for months in walk in coolers. I don't know. I do know if not preserved correctly, they will develop a fungus, so keep them cool, unless already dried out by the farmer in his drying bins. Anyway, for the best overall peanut boil, get green ones in August, Sept, and early Oct, depending on harvest time, put in lots of salt, and boil away. Now that's some **** good eatin'.
I just picked up a half bushel full of fresh green peanuts and I'm boiling now. Come see me at the Ga. Rally and if I have any left, sit down and enjoy some with me. I hope to have some there. I might pick up another bushel and just cook them on location. Bring your own beer.
By the way, you can freeze boiled peanuts and save them. If not frozen in the briine they are cooked in, I would eat them within a month. If you freeze them in the salty water you cooked them in, you can keep them for six months. Just pop them in the microwave, thaw, then put in a bowl and heat them up to a small boil. They will be almost as fresh as the green ones you cooked months earlier, and still, absolutely delicious. They grow on you. I'll see if I can bring up some uprooted cotton plants for the northerners too, so they can bring a cotton boll home to their kids and let them see how long it takes to pick the seeds out of it. Eli Whitney's cotton gin was amazing.