What are boiled peanuts? Boiled peanuts are simply RAW (unroasted) peanuts boiled in salty water for a long time. They are a common snack in the states of South Carolina, Georgia, northern Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and to a lesser extent, North Carolina and Virginia. Boiled peanuts (and similarly boiled soybeans) also exist in other cultures around the globe, throughout Asia, especially, and Western Africa. Boiled peanuts are boiled in the shell and are consumed, still wet, by cracking open the softened shell and slurping down the contents along with the brine. I have not tried them but I'm game if George is!!!!

More reason to love them... BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - For lovers of boiled peanuts, there's some good news from the health front. A new study by a group of Huntsville researchers found that boiled peanuts bring out up to four times more chemicals that help protect against disease than raw, dry or oil-roasted nuts. ADVERTISEMENT Lloyd Walker, chair of Alabama A&M University's Department of Food and Animal Sciences who co-authored the study, said these phytochemicals have antioxidant qualities that protect cells against the risk of degenerative diseases, including cancers, diabetes and heart disease. "Boiling is a better method of preparing peanuts in order to preserve these phytochemicals," Walker said. The study will appear in Wednesday's edition of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The other co-authors in the study are A&M researchers Yvonne Chukwumah and Martha Verghese, as well as University of Alabama in Huntsville researcher Bernhard Vogler. Walker said peanuts and other plants use phytochemicals for things such as helping avoid disease and insect attacks. "These things are not nutrients; at the same time they have health benefits to humans," he told The Birmingham News. "The trick is to keep those health benefits, not to process them out of the foods." According to Walker, water and heat penetrate the nuts, releasing beneficial chemicals to a certain point. Overcooking the nuts destroys the useful elements. Alabama is third in the nation in the amount of peanuts produced with a crop valued at more than $67 million last year.

I felt like I just visited the Twilight Zone after reading (and viewing) your post! Very well done!! I guess I have not been to any fairs like that recently. The last one would have been the Texas state fair, and I haven't been to that since I was 16. The last festival that I went to was the Tofu Festival in Little Tokyo a couple of years ago - or maybe the African festival or Thai festival in Thai Town. I do enjoy street fairs here, however, but they do not qualify as festivals. I think the Tofu festival was the most similar to your strawberry festival, and I can understand why it was discontinued. There is only so much tofu you can eat in one afternoon. It would have been interesting to see some pictures of other attendees of the strawberry festival. For some reason, I am reminded of the Pogo episode in which Pogo goes incognito and says to Albert, "Hi! I is Strawberry Shortcut, the Baton Bombshell. Why don't you give up cigars?" Pogo was wearing a mop and a bucket on his head (as a wig and a hat), but Albert was still able to recognize him as Larceny Lil, wanted in 53 states for various crimes against nature. Have you been to Okefenokee? Lars

I have never been to any other any where this was my first time! I have no idea what I paid for them I was so excited to see them LOL I have actually never eaten Vietnamese food, but I do like some oriental food one of my faves is Orange chicken. I don't even know where Bellaire is I will have to look at Google maps, as you can probably tell since we have not been here that long I have not ventured out very far LOL. Sure I am up for road trips. By the way it is thunderbooming here again right now and rain drops are falling on my skylights, darn I thought we would get a full day of no rain. I did not try the crockpot but these were so fresh they only took about an hour or so which was not bad. I know using a pressure cooker is a very good way to do it and helps get the seasoning in too but I don't have one. My big gumbo pot worked great.