There’s no place in New York City to stomp up some peanuts. And that’s a pity.
Fact is, New Yorkers don’t know squat about peanuts except that Jimmy Carter grew ’em and JIFF is made out of them.
If there’s one thing we can be proud of in the Great State of Alabama, it’s the peanut. Yes sir, the peanut was practically invented in Alabama by George Washington Carver, with a little help from the Almighty, of course.
I don’t know how you feel about nuts, but personally, I don’t like them much. I’d rather eat buckshot than a bowl of cashews. I hate nuts so much, I even scrape the pecans of my mama’s pies. Macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts, and acorns all taste the same to me. But the peanut is a different story.
I’m not talking Mr. Planter here. Eating peanuts out of jar is something that should be confined to a nuclear winter or the like. There’s just no excuse when you live in a great state like Alabama where peanut stompin’ abounds. I want my peanuts fresh.
There are only two ways I like my peanuts, and both are mushy. The first way is the ground all to heck and made into butter (smooth, please). The second is boiled.
I’ll address boiling first. You’re not going to believe this, but some folks up here don’t know what boiled peanuts are. Take my friend Kurt, for example. He asked me point blank, “why do you boil peanuts?”
“Because they wouldn’t be any good if you just let ’em soak in cold water,” I responded.
Kurt had never had boiled peanuts, and since there isn’t anyplace to get them in New York, I had to import them from Alabama. Only in Alabama can you buy boiled peanuts in a can (“Now with convenient pop-top!”).
I couldn’t believe that the company gave away their secret ingredients right there on the can: “green boiled peanuts, water, salt.” They even gave away heating instructions: “empty contents into saucepan, heat. serve.” Shoot, this might be something I could make, I thought. But when Kurt saw the grey matter floating in its salty brine, he gave me a “No way José” look and fled the area. So I ate the whole 99 cent de-luxe can of boiled peanuts myself. That amounted to 1,004% of my suggested daily intake of sodium. For three days I looked like a refuge from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
But the best use of peanuts, in my opinion, is in peanut butter. And my favorite peanut butter is “BAMA” peanut butter, manufactured right in good old Birmingham. Who would know better how to make peanut butter than Alabamians?
Welches, a Yankee conglomerate based in Concord, Massachusetts, a state that hardly anybody can spell, bought BAMA and moved the operations out of our fair region. Can you believe that? I am sure, that like me, that you are outraged. I was so mad, I wrote a letter to the president of Welches Foods, Inc., Dan P. Dillon. See if you think I’m being too harsh:
“Mr Dillon:
As a Bama Foods consumer, I am appalled that you moved operations out of The Great State of Alabama. You are using our state’s name in vain, and I don’t like it.
By exposing your Yankee carpetbagger plot in my syndicated Alabama column, I’m sure my readers will find irony in the fact that Bama products are no longer manufactured in Alabama. Woe be the Massachusetts company that woos the Heart of Dixie with imposter peanut butter. Repent, sir.
With much ignominy,
Morgan Murphy”
I didn’t bother to inform Mr. Dillon that by syndication, I meant that this column also runs in Covington County. I’ll bet that letter will have him quaking in his boots. Think! There are unemployed Alabamians who used to make good peanut butter, and now they’re probably having to make boiled peanuts in some shack by a ditch.
Write Mr. Dillon today and express your anger that he’s creating ditch dwellers. Tell him that Thomasville isn’t gonna touch his Benedict Arnold peanut by-products. His address is: Mr. Dan P. Dillon, President & CEO, Welches Inc. 3 Concord Farms, 555 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742
–Morgan Murphy