VIRGINIA PEANUTS

My nephew and his wife transferred to the state of Virginia for his career. He is a pharmaceutical researcher. He was hired by the University of Virginia to help with the development of synthetic insulin. His wife is a dentist so she took her board exam to qualify to practice in that state. After they had a chance to get settled they invited my husband and I to come and spend time with them.

We had never been to the south east coast, so we decided to drive. We live in Minnesota so this was a two day drive. It was interesting to see the fields of cotton as well as Virginia peanuts. These are crops that are not grown in our cold climate. When we arrived at my nephew’s home we made plans for the time that we would be there. They had to work for two of the days, so we decided that we would go into Washington D.C. during that time and then we would spend the weekend time with them around the area that they lived. On our way to the nation’s capital we again passed many fields of Virginia peanuts.

We enjoyed our time looking at the monuments and museums. We realized that we would have to make a return trip because there is so much to see and do in our capital city. On our way back to my nephew’s house we stopped and picked up a can of Virginia peanuts. They were the best peanuts that I have ever tasted. They are large in size and are very hard and crunchy. We shared some of them with my nephew and his wife. They told us that there was a special store in the town that they live in that sells the canned Virginia peanuts and ships them all over the world. This shop has a history of the peanut. We made plans to go there.

This shop had a unique variety of lawn and garden merchandize in addition to the extensive collection of containers and cans to fill with Virginia peanuts. You can be placed on an auto shipment list so that the company sends the nuts out to you at agreed upon intervals. The owner of the company explained that Virginia ham gets its distinctive flavor because the hogs are raised on Virginia peanuts. It was not until the civil war that are people started eating the nuts as a source of protein. They liked the taste so much that the crop became a people food in addition to being pig fodder. We arranged to have a shipment of the nuts sent to us every three months.

We enjoyed our trip to the state of Virginia very much. We have a delicious reminder of our vacation every month when we get our new shipment of Virginia peanuts.