When it comes to nutrition and taking responsibility for the things we eat, trips to the supermarket are probably on the top of your list. While it’s true that you can obtain great products and food from the shops, the one item they don’t stock is wild food and wild edible plants. What is meant by wild food, though, is any plant that hasn’t had any sort of human interference to increase its growth or production. If you have ever thought about picking your own wild food or getting involved with a more healthy way of eating, this is definitely the way to go about it because there are so many benefits to eating wild food that hasn’t been modified by humans.

With so many convenience foods and quick ready-meals on the market today, there are many areas where it’s simply unheard of to pick edible dandelions or nettle plants even though there’s no cost to doing this. One of the benefits of picking and eating your own types of wild food and edible plants is that they are much healthier in the way of nutrients than their shop bought counterparts. For example, one type of wild food that is certainly edible is called “Fat Hen” and this is a green plant that is comparable to spinach or cabbage. However, Fat Hen contains more protein, Vitamin B, iron, and calcium! Another example is wild garlic that is healthier than cultivated garlic because of the chlorophyll that it contains, not to mention that it makes a great addition to salads and other flavouring!

Yet another benefit to choosing the wild food route and staying away from shop bought produce for the most part is that the wild plants, natural fruits, and vegetables that can be grown from your own back yard or that can be picked in fields don’t contain chemicals, pesticides, or herbicides. Anything that is added to plants or food in a farmers’ field in order to make it grow larger or quicker or added so that the crops will stay fresh longer is usually unnatural and has very little nutritional value, if any.

When it comes to choosing the food that we eat, many times, the supermarket is our first stop. However, eating wild food and picking it naturally from the earth gives us intangible benefits: responsibility and respect. After you have experienced going out to find wild food plants for your meals or tending to the fresh fruits and vegetables in your own backyard then you’ll naturally develop a newfound sense of responsibility for yourself as well as for your body to keep it healthy. In addition, many people say that they also gain more respect for the earth and plants that have been here for thousands of years when they begin to take on a new lifestyle of choosing wild food and plants over chemical treated, shop bought foodstuffs.

What makes deep fried peanuts a gourmet snack food? I am sure many people would say they do not cost enough, or what can be gourmet
about a peanut. George Washington Carver developed many uses for the peanut that we never think about. It is a cool nut that is not a nut, it is a legume. A legume is a plant that encloses its seeds in a pod, so peanuts are like a bean that grows underground. It also is the crop of choice for one of our former presidents Jimmy Carter. If that does not make it gourmet I don’t know what would. Because there are so many different food items made from peanuts, it can be used so many different ways, and it is the chosen crop of a former president deep fried peanuts have to be a gourmet snack food.

So what are the food items that we use from peanuts? There are so many this can not be an exhaustive list but will cover many of the main categories. We all know about peanut butter, and what a great choice to mix with jelly on a sandwich. It is also used in many Asian dishes as a thickener in soups and stews. Many times Chinese, dishes have peanuts sprinkled on top to give the dish some crunch. Of course you can eat them raw, or roasted with salt or honey glazed on the nuts. Here in the south, we have a couple of unusual traditions with peanuts. The first is boiled peanuts. You can be driving down the road and many road side produce stands will have signs advertising boiled peanuts. Some of you may ask, what is a boiled peanut? Raw peanuts with the shell are dumped into a pot of boiling water which can have different flavors like salted, garlic, or Cajun. Then the peanuts are removed. The shell is cracked and the juice is sucked out and the peanuts eaten. The most unusual is deep fried peanuts. In the south, you have to deep fry everything. So with the shells on, you drop the peanuts into hot grease and fry. Then as they come out of the oil sprinkle your favorite flavors on the shell. Then eat the peanuts shell and all. Good stuff.

What else can we use the peanut for besides eating? One application is the making of peanut oil. Everyone who loves deep frying knows that the longest lasting and safest oil to fry in is peanut oil. Most restaurants use peanut oil because it lasts so much longer than vegetable oil in their deep fryers. The second reason is peanut oil has a lot higher ignition temperature than other oils. So when making funnel cakes or deep fried turkeys, your risk of fire is reduced greatly. Peanuts can also be used to make cosmetics, fuel for biomass stoves, dyes, paints, stains, paper glue, gas and hundreds of other things according to the Tuskegee University web site. The last group and probably the most used but least thought about are medicines. Peanuts and peanut products can be used for rubbing oils, castor oil substitutes, laxatives, and even for venereal disease. That George Washington Carver was an amazing inventor. He came up with all of these uses and did and only sold three of them, the rest he gave to mankind.

The last reason deep fried peanuts can be a gourmet food snack is a former president grew up on a peanut farm. Every body knew the peanut farmer from Georgia in 1976. The campaign was as much about rural people and peanuts as it was about the candidates. Now, Plains Georgia has an annual celebration of the peanut and the former president. There are images of the peanut all over the town, a 5K race, beauty queens, and several other competitions during the festival. There are also several museums commemorating Mr. Carter and the influence the peanut and farming had on his life. If a president had a significant experience with a peanut, then I think you should also. Go find some deep fried peanuts, boiled peanuts, or some honey roasted. I am sure you will be glad you did