Peanuts

 This past summer, one of our experiments was peanuts.  N chose these (and popcorn, but that's a whole other post, since we still don't have any harvested)

Last week, we went out and harvested...the boys and I.  I dug them up (have you ever seen how they grow?   Kind of like potatoes)

 And they pulled all the peanuts of the plants.

We collected a colander full from the one seed packet we planted.  Pretty successful, I think, since we were just checking if they could grow well in our area.

I soaked them overnight in salt water (like I did for the sunflower seeds) but this may have been a mistake.

After roasting them in the oven, the peanuts were still really really soft, so I am thinking I probably shouldn't have soaked them.  Incidentally, this whole process took a while...wanna know why?  After I soaked them, I put them on a baking sheet.  An air bake one that I have that doesn't have a rim on it.  I only have one with a rim, and it was dirty, and I didn't feel like washing it before roasting the peanuts, since I was doing that at the same time as getting supper ready.  I looked at it and thought "I won't spill, I will just be really careful".  So, I put them in the over at 350 degrees.  At 10 minutes I took them out to stir them up carefully, and then I went to put them back in the oven at which point I tipped the whole tray into the bottom of the oven.  The gas oven...into the part where the flame is...while I was also trying to make dinner.  So I turned the oven off and got some spaghetti sauce out of the freezer and made spaghetti instead of what I was going to be cooking...a new recipe I was inventing that we were all pretty excited to try.  Then I had to wait for the oven to cool, so I went to do the groceries.  When I came back, I took the oven panels out with a screwdriver and removed all the peanuts from the bottom flame area...some with tweezers.  They kind of got stuck everywhere...and while I was in there I removed some broken glass from a casserole I exploded a few years back (I had "baby brain" at the time...N was a baby and I was sorely lacking sleep). So I am telling myself there is a reason that I spilled all those peanuts.

Anyways, by the time I finished all that, I was in no mood to roast the peanuts, so I roasted them the following night.  For 40 minutes.  And they still came out really really soft.

So...today I shelled them all...

and roasted them without the shell.  For a little more than 20 minutes this time.

They are still kind of chewy.  If I can't figure out how to fix it, I am going to roast them a little bit more, and then candy them.  That should fix just about everything I would think.

Any suggestions - I mean other than the obvious "Do it right the first time"  :)

Linking up with barn hop at Homestead Revival on Monday
                        Backyard Farming Connection at Simple and Joyful on Tuesday.