"The Boiled Peanut Book: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Boiled Peanuts"

My sister-in-law, living in Alabama, tells me they are an acquired taste. Her husband picks up a can of them and munches throughout the day. "They" are boiled peanuts. Though part of southern cuisine, boiled peanuts (and how they are made) offer a challenge to the uninitiated. 

Author Robert Deen quotes one of them: "At gas stations in the South, I've opened the lids on hot stainless steel kettles and looked at the boiled peanuts floating there, soggy and a bit slimy, but I have never had the courage to eat them."

Deen's new book is out to change that. It also contains instructions for do-it-yourselfers and lots of recipes for adding flavor. "The Boiled Peanut Book: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Boiled Peanuts" ($9.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) is just plain fun reading (and will make boiled peanut aficionados salivate). 

Deen graduated from Chico State with a Master's in Communications and, after a career in public relations, retired to the Oregon Coast to write. But he was born in Florida and knows a boiled peanut when he sees one. 

"In a nutshell," he writes, "a boiled peanut is exactly what it says, a peanut boiled in the shell in salt water, often with a spicy mixture. The result is an extremely soft peanut in the shell, quite salty. The softened peanuts are easy to open and bursting with the boiling liquid which fills the shell during the boiling process.... A 'boil' of green peanuts often includes small, immature peanuts called 'pops,' super soft and edible whole, shell and all!"

They don't taste like roasted ("not even remotely") and there's a right and wrong way to eat them (all detailed in the book, along with the history of "goobers" and a plethora of recipes from around the world). They spoil quickly: "Boiled peanuts left at room temperature will only be good for a day" though they can be refrigerated and even canned.

Making your basic boiled peanuts will take up to six hours of simmering on the stove. You may need that long to decide whether to eat one.

Family-friendly Paleo cookbook from a Chico mom

Sarah Fragoso came slowly to the Paleo lifestyle. Robb Wolf, of NorCal Strength and Conditioning in Chico, introduced her to the eating plan, but it wasn't until just a few years ago, after the birth of her third son, and plagued by a host of health issues, that she got serious. "I eventually committed to trying Paleo for thirty days," she writes, "and that was all the convincing I needed."

Now that her three kids, and husband John, have made the move to Paleo, Fragoso is spreading the word. First came "Everyday Paleo" and "Paleo Pals: Jimmy and the Carrot Rocket Ship," and now "Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook: Real Food for Real Life" ($29.95 in paperback from Victory Belt Publishing; also available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook e-book formats). Replete with gorgeous full-color photographs by Michael J. Lang, the book is more than just a recipe collection. It's also a realistic guide to Paleo meals on a budget and what to put into the kids' lunch boxes, with more at everydaypaleo.com.

"The primary tenets of living a Paleo lifestyle," Fragoso says, include avoiding "grains, legumes, dairy, vegetable oils, refined sugar" and "highly processed foods. ... Eat meat from animals that lived the way nature intended their species to live--e.g., cattle fed on grass; eat both vegetables and fruit, but eat more vegetables than fruits; eat quality fats like avocado and coconut oil; eat nuts and seeds, but in moderation."

The transition to Paleo can be challenging. "If you grumble and gripe about no longer having cereal for breakfast, your little ones will, too." But "if you hand them a spatula and show them how to crack eggs as you laugh and giggle together, no one will miss the cereal."

Fragoso, a recent visitor to Lyon Books in Chico, draws on the main recipe section in creating helpful lists. There are 15 lunch box ideas, 15 "quick and simple" meals, a one-week meal plan and a week's shopping list. Recipe categories include sauces and dips, slow cooker recipes, soups and stews, "meaty meals," sides and salads, and fruity creations. Most of the recipes have a "something extra" section with creative variations.

And for an energy boost? There's even a recipe for "Rocket Fuel."

Local author on sustainable living with native plants

 

An author's note says that Alicia Funk, who lives "off the grid with her husband and three children," "first learned plant based medicine in 1990 from an indigenous grandmother in Ecuador's rainforest." With her co-author, landscape architect and Nevada City resident Karin Kaufman, Funk has crafted a full-color reference, "Living Wild: Gardening, Cooking and Healing With Native Plants of the Sierra Nevada" ($29.95 in paperback from Flicker Press).

A recent visitor to Lyon Books in Chico, where the volume is available locally, Funk facilitates "living wild" workshops. According to the authors, "our modern-day American diet relies upon a mere 30 or so plant species, while 200 years ago an indigenous Californian's diet would have included about a thousand. We have lost the Native Californians' valuable 'user's manual' that could guide us to the plants we would enjoy eating and help us to learn the best ways to prepare them."

The largest part of the book is a color compendium of native species for the garden, from the White Alder to the evergreen shrub Yerba Santa (which is deer resistant). Each listing points (as appropriate) to the Foods, Medicine, and Cultural and Functional Arts sections. For the Manzanita, one can fix Manzanita Blossom Jelly for breakfast. Manzanita has been used to treat Poison Oak; its wood has been fashioned into kitchen utensils.

The section on making medicines (including teas, herbal syrups, salves and poultices) notes that the process "is a fun, relaxing experience that provides a way to personally engage in health and wellness." The authors carefully note that the uses listed often come from Native lore and haven't been tested scientifically; and in many cases the preparations shouldn't be used by those who are pregnant. Yerba Santa tea is considered a decongestant by "by Miwok, Pomo and Yuki tribes and by doctors who listed it as an official remedy in the US. Pharmacopoeia in 1894." The Maidu "used the dried and powdered inner bark (of the White Alder) as an astringent to clean wounds."

There are some 70 recipes in the food section. Elderberry wine, anyone? Oak Nut Gingerbread? (Oak nut flour is gluten-free.) It's a way to "enjoy nutrient-rich, carbon-free food from the plants growing around our home. ... We allow the wild in."

Paleo for the family: A guide from a local mom (and Crossfit Trainer)

Sarah Fragoso is not only a trainer at Robb Wolf's NorCal Strength and Conditioning gym in Chico. She's an ardent exponent of what has come to be known as "the paleo solution" (the title of Wolf's recent best-seller). Fragoso says that "eating paleo is an easy concept: We should eat as our ancestors once did, we should eat based on how we are genetically wired to eat."

That means out with processed foods along with "dairy, legumes, any form of sugar, and grains!" Grains? Fragoso writes that they "are gut irritants, especially grains containing gluten such as wheat, barley, and rye. When our gut lining gets irritated, we are unable to properly digest our food." So bread is out. But it's okay to bring home the bacon since the right kind of fat is not bad. Fat is not what is making Americans overweight, it's the "non-fat, high-carb diet."

For those who want to try paleo at the family level, Fragoso has written an intensely practical guide. "Everyday Paleo: Embracing a Natural Diet & Lifestyle To Increase Your Family's Health, Fitness, and Longevity" ($29.95 in softcover from Victory Belt Publishing) tells what happened when she, her chiropractor husband, and three kids embraced the paleo idea. But that's just the beginning.

Fragoso will be signing copies of her book, and talking about the paleo lifestyle, at 7:00 p.m. this Wednesday, June 8 at Lyon Books in Chico.

The largest part of the book is a compendium of recipes (including shopping lists for trying "30 days of paleo") that will feed the entire family. Recipes (with full-color illustrations) include "perfect pork pot roast," "everyday meatloaf," and "Thai shrimp soup" (with more recipes available at http://everydaypaleo.com).

The last section introduces basic fitness showing the author's family in a series of full-color, step-by-step moves from "stroller sit-ups" to "partner push-ups." There's a chapter on fitness for kids and one on "advanced body weight and bar movements" (for those a little more advanced), as well as a series of beginning and intermediate workouts.

How about cheating on eating? Fragoso recommends a strict adherence to the paleo diet the first thirty days--no gluten--but she's a realist. Readers will respond to her verve--and honesty.

SHORT NOTICES

Food writer Kitty Morse, a Vista, California resident who recently visited Chico, has prepared "A Biblical Feast: Ancient Mediterranean Flavors For Today's Table" ($18.95 in paperback from La Caravane, available at Lyon Books in Chico). Beautifully designed and photographed, the book offers dozens of recipes (from "Goat Cheese & Olive Appetizers With Melon" to "Grilled Tilapia") familiar to the ancient Hebrews and early Christians. Each menu item offers an associated Biblical reference and an historical and culinary discussion. Morse includes a glossary of foodstuffs mentioned in the King James Bible and suggests menus for entertaining guests. There's more at www.abiblicalfeast.com.

"Fit At Fifty Something" ($14.95 in paperback from Two Harbors Press) is Sacramento dentist Brian Bolstad's prescription for a more vigorous middle age. After suffering from debilitating back pain, Bolstad resumed martial arts training in his late forties and now, in his mid-fifties, offers what he calls common sense advice on nutrition and weight control, time management, endurance, stress, and sex. The last half of the book features large black-and-white pictures of the author performing a series of flexibility and range of motion exercises. (A DVD set is available at fitatfiftysomething.com.) Witty and blunt ("embrace a little hunger"), Bolstad rocks.

"Willows" ($21.99 in paperback from Arcadia Publishing) is part of the the "Images of America" series. Prepared by the Museum Society of Willows and museum volunteers JoAnn Wright and Evelyn Whisman, the book features over 200 historical photographs with extensive captions. An introduction sets the scene, noting that "the first settlers of what was then the northern part of Colusa County" found land surrounded by willows (fed by a spring near the present town). By the 1870s, farmland was going "for $4-$6 an acre." The "million dollar fire" at Hochheimer's department store in 1920 was devastating, but "can-do" Willows rebuilt.