In the first installments of Bloggin' for Audey (#1, #2), we covered my mother's memories of her family's vegetable gardens. Here is a bit more detail.
Well, about the kitchen garden, I had forgotten about the peanuts that were planted late summer and harvested and dried by Christmas. Okay they were dug and dry and [Daddy] picked the nuts off the part underground, he picked em and put them on a 2X4 screen which dried them. He turned them as they dried. When they dried some, and they had to be a bit dry or they’d rot, he put them in five pound, mesh fruit bags. Then they were hung in the washhouse to dry on the water pipes, on the ceiling. He gave some to his nieces…if you came for Christmas dinner, you got a sack of peanuts. I just know that [my cousin] J. always thought he was so nice because he would let her pick a bag of peanuts. She remembers that now…she’s in her sixties. The peanuts were roasted in flat pans in the oven over the winter months. Once a year, [Daddy] would fry some of them, cooked them in oil. They were those tiny, Spanish [nuts] that were so hard to peel. When you roasted them, you’d cook so many in a large enamel baking pan, you’d have them for days. The fried, salted ones were the same way.
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