Eatin’ Goober Peas…

“Sitting by the roadside on a summer’s day
Chatting with my mess-mates, passing time away
Lying in the shadows underneath the trees
Goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas.”

Not sure how I forgot in yesterday’s post one of the highlights of our trip… goober peas! While driving in central Alabama, I mentioned to Sofia that soon we’d be seeing places to stop and get some goober peas. As one might imagine, Sofia became intrigued because goober sounds so much like booger (I think). After explaining to her and Mom that that was what they called the wonderfully yummy boiled peanuts sold in roadside marts in southern Alabama and northern Florida (Georgia too, but we didn’t go through there, or anywhere around peanut farms), the 3 of us were on high alert to find a fruit stand that sold them. And of course, they delivered the yumminess expected. Sofia and Mom were in the backseat eating them like popcorn and handing them to me in the front while I drove. They are soft, very salty and yummy… and sometimes they have regular and spicy although we didn’t see any spicy ones. The lyric above is from the song “Goober Peas” that was on an old Burl Ives album (older reference lost on younger readers) my parents had when I was growing up. I thought it was a funny nonsense song when I was a kid and only later became informed that goober peas were boiled peanuts and sometimes just peanuts and as in the song were an emergency ration for confederate soldiers during and after the civil war. That Burl Ives double album set was a strange collection of songs and put Burl in that strangely affected group in my head that includes Tennessee Ernie Ford (older reference lost on younger readers)who also sang “Goober Peas” on one of his albums. Tennessee had some funny songs like Burl (these were the non-gospel songs Ford is known for) and although the secular songs he’s known most for are “sixteen tons” and “davy crockett”, my favorites were those hillbilly-ish repressed sexual innuendo songs some of which were duets with Kay Starr who had a voice to die for. But I digress, I spent an hour at the sink last night shuckin’ goober peas to get this…

Mom took some to work for lunch today but I was sauteing some onions, garlic, and mushrooms to add to some pasta and homegrown tomatoes and thought… what the hell, and threw some goober peas in and had it all with the pasta. Since I’m from central NY, I felt like this was my own personal reconciliation and healing betwixt north and south for the pain of our mutual civil conflict plus it made the pasta very salty without the need to add any salt substitutes. It was a busy day yesterday… while I was blogging, Sofia set up a restaurant which looked like this…

After walking the dog, we set out to the Red Pepper for our weekly Dad and Sofia chinese lunch. Then we attended a performance of “Lookingglass Alice” at Actors Theatre of Louisville. It was very cool and was a slightly abstract version of the classic to accommodate the very talented acrobats that put on the show. The cast had the skills of circus acrobats and there were lots of humor and death-defying stunts. Sofia was mesmerized and I wasn’t sure she liked it so much until after, when we were walking out, she asked if we could go watch it again. Then we returned home and I fielded Alice in Wonderland questions for a couple hours, one while getting those goober out of the shells. Then dinner, Mom home and bedtime for the bug.

Tags: ceramics, clay, porcelain, pottery