What’s that sound? Silence! Jas and her dad went to a friends house on a lake to spent the night and hang out all day. So silence once again presides. Ah... isn't it great. Silence is something that has been in short supply these days around Casa El Daisy. Since my oldest son moved in there has been constant noise and activity around here. I miss my quiet peaceful existence. Now the phone is constantly ringing, people dropping in and out, constant noise. How can a person write in conditions like this? They can’t! So I put a small computer desk in a corner of my bedroom with the hopes of sneaking away for a few hours to write each day. That was three days ago and I haven’t found the time to write even one line yet. This morning I got another bright idea. I would get a small handheld tape recorder and when brilliant lines hit me I would record them. Then, after Jas goes to bed I could sit down with the tape recorder and transcribe all of my brilliant thoughts into a book. So far the only words I have recorded are “testing, one two three.” But the day is young.



When the hubster, Jas and I were on vacation we happened upon a lovely country store that had the cutest gift shop and yummy snacks like roasted peanuts, peanut brittle, the best molasses cookies on the planet and something we had never tried before; boiled peanuts. The young girl behind the counter sold us on the virtues of a boiled peanut and before you could say peanut butter we were sitting at a picnic table on the front porch of Mackey’s Ferry Peanuts munching on boiled peanuts and washing them down with ice cold cokes. And they weren’t just any cokes, they were the old fashioned cokes in the small green bottles. You know what cokes I am talking about. The best cokes in the world! It was a damp rainy afternoon but it turned out to be one of our favorite moments of the vacation. It was so relaxing sitting there eating those yummy boiled peanuts and drinking cokes that we remembered from childhood. When we got home from vacation I emailed Mackey’s Ferry and asked them for the boiled peanut recipe. The owners Chris and Sharon were kind enough to send me the recipe. I ordered a five pound bag of raw peanuts and when they arrived yesterday afternoon I was ready to cook! The method Sharon told me of was using a pressure cooker. In an hour or two you had boiled peanuts. I wanted to experiment however. You know me and cooking experiments, lest we forget the six lemon icebox pie recipes I tried in my search for the perfect lemon icebox pie. I found the Paula Deen method of making boiled peanuts online. They involve a pound of peanuts, a cup of salt (yes a cup) and three hours of constant boiling. I boiled the peanuts five hours last night using the Paula Deen method. They were still crunchy. I let them sit in their water overnight to hopefully soften and I continued to boil them today. They have been boiling for a total of seven hours and would you believe those peanuts are STILL slightly crunchy! The moral of the story is if you want to try boiled peanuts (which I highly recommend) email the owners of Mackey’s Ferry and ask them for their famous boiled peanut recipe.