Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream shortening, vanilla and sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat. Add peanut butter, then sifted dry ingredients. Shape into balls and place on un-greased cookie sheet. Press balls with fork tines which have been dipped in flour. Bake about 10 minutes or until lightly browned.

Mamma Bettye’s Recipe
Bettye Williams, wife of Clint Williams

Topping:
2/3 cup corn syrup
1/4 cup margarine or butter
2 tsp. vanilla
12-oz. pkg. peanut butter chips
2 cups crisp rice cereal
2 cups salted peanuts

Heat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl, combine cake mix, 1/3 cup margarine and egg; beat at low speed until crumbly. Press into bottom of ungreased 9×13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-18 minutes or until light golden brown. Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle with marshmallows. Return to oven 1-2 minutes or until marshmallows just begin to puff. Cool while preparing topping.

In large saucepan, heat corn syrup, margarine, vanilla and chips just until chips are melted and mixture is smooth, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in cereal and nuts. Immediately spoon warm topping over marshmallows, spread to cover. Chill. Cut into bars. Store covered.

De’Aun Hale Sandvig

Cream shortening and add sugars, gradually. Add vanilla and continue creaming. Add eggs and beat well.

Sift flour with soda and add to shortening mixture. Stir in oats and peanuts. Blend thoroughly. With clean hands, form dough into small balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Bake at 425 degrees for about 7 minutes. Makes about six dozen 3-inch cookies.

Writa May Peterson

1. Always use real vanilla extract. Artificial vanilla will bake out and freeze out in recipes.
2. Be careful not to overbake cookies. If you are not sure your oven temperature is correct, watch cookies very closely and remove as soon as they start to brown. Cookies left on the baking sheet will continue to bake a few minutes after they are removed from the oven; they may get too brown on bottom.
3. Cookies made with Eagle Brand Milk are especially prone to burning. Watch them carefully.
4. Do not substitute low fat or “lite” margarine in cookie dough. It has more water in it and you will not get the same baking results.
5. Commercial buttermilk has a flavor all its own. Milk soured with vinegar as a substitute will not give you the same flavor.
6. Always pre-heat your oven.
7. Let cookie dough “rest” or chill in refrigerator before forming if you want uniform cookies that don’t flatten out and get too brown around the edges.

I never met a cookie I didn’t like!

Linda Jones
Editor In Chief

A. Peanut seeds (kernels) grow into a green oval-leafed plant about 18 inches tall, which develop delicate yellow flowers around the lower portion of the plant. The flowers pollinate themselves and then lose their petals as the fertilized ovary begins to enlarge. The budding ovary or ‘peg’ grows down away from the plant, extending into the soil. The peanut embryo turns horizontal to the soil surface and begins to mature, taking the form of the peanut. From planting to harvesting, the growing cycle takes four to five months, depending on the type or variety.

Q. How many pounds of peanuts are consumed in the United States each year?
A. 2.4 billion pounds! About 50% are consumed as peanut butter.

Q. Are there different types of peanuts?
A. Yes. There are mainly three types of peanuts grown in the United States- Virginias, Runners and Spanish peanuts. Virginias are often called cocktail nuts and are considered large-kerneled. Medium-sized kernels are called Runners and small-sized kernels are called Spanish peanuts. A fourth type, Valencia peanuts, are grown less frequently in the US and are characterized by three or four small kernels in a long shell.

Q. Where are peanuts grown in the United States?
A. Mainly in these eight states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Q. Why are peanuts sometimes referred to as “ground nuts?”
A. Peanuts actually grow underground, as opposed to nuts like walnuts, almonds, etc. that grow on trees (and are sometimes referred to as “tree nuts”).

Q. Where did peanuts originate?
A. The peanut plant is thought to have originated in Brazil or Peru. Portuguese explorers transplanted it to Africa, and from there it was brought to America as an inexpensive, high-protein staple, later to be consumed by soldiers during the Civil War.

Q. Who is George Washington Carver?
A. George Washington Carver is considered by many to be the father of the peanut industry. He began his peanut research in 1903. He suggested to farmers that they rotate their cotton plants and cultivate peanuts.

Q. Are peanuts legumes?
A. Yes. Peanuts, along with beans and peas, belong to the single plant family, Leguminosae. Legumes are edible seeds enclosed in pods. As a group, they provide the best source of concentrated protein in the plant kingdom. While their physical structure and nutritional benefits more closely resemble that of other legumes, their use in diets and cuisines more closely resembles that of nuts.

Q. Where is the best place to buy All types of peanuts?
A. Texoma Peanut Inn, 912 South First Street, Madill OK, 73446

Call 1-800-326-0231 or go on line at www.peanutinn.com

There are many peanut varieties, but only four basic types: runner, Virginia, Spanish and Valencia.

• Runners are the dominant type, high yielding, with their uniform kernels carried in pods on long, low stems. (Other peanut types grow more upright and compact.) Runners are grown mainly in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma.
• Virginias, raised mostly in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, have the largest kernels; most cocktail peanuts and those roasted and processed in the shell are of this type.
• Spanish peanuts have smaller kernels, covered with reddish-brown skin – high in oil; they go into peanut candies, snacks and peanut butter. Oklahoma and Texas produce most of the Spanish type.
• Sweet Valencias, primarily from New Mexico, contain three or more small kernels per pod. They’re usually roasted in the shell for “ballpark peanuts,” or sold fresh for boiling.

Production Figures
Peanuts are grown in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas, with half of the world’s production in India and China, and about 10 percent in the United States. Georgia is the top U.S. producer, with 540,000 acres planted in 1999; Texas is second, with 360,000; Alabama third, with 197,000.

Three-quarters of U.S. peanuts are used domestically, mostly for edible products, and half of peanuts for edible use go into peanut butter.

Nut Products
Americans still go for goobers by the handful — in the shell or out; oil roasted or dry roasted; salted or plain, honey-roasted or spicy. They also show up in many other foods, especially confections — six of the 10 top-selling candy bars contain peanuts or peanut butter.

Luckily for peanut lovers, research indicates that diets high in unsaturated fats, such as from olive oil and peanuts, promote healthy hearts.

The phytochemical resveratrol, found in red wine and grapes, and credited with keeping the French heart-healthy in spite of their high fat consumption (the French Paradox), is also present in peanuts. There are about 73 micrograms of resveratrol in an ounce of peanuts, 160 in an ounce of red wine. Though how resveratrol works its magic is not exactly known, it may protect against atherosclerosis by preventing the oxidation of LDL in the blood, which leads to deposits of cholesterol on the walls of the arteries.

Working for Us
If you work for peanuts you can never go hungry and when it comes to health, it’s good to know that peanuts are working for us.

About 10% of the peanut crop is sold as in-shell peanuts – usually the Virginia and Valencia types. To sort for size, the peanuts travel over sizing screens that permit the smaller pods to fall through.

Peanuts to be shelled are placed in slotted drums containing screens of different sizes. Rotating shelling bars crush the shells just enough to allow the kernels to fall out. The kernels are sized and cleaned on screens that permit the smaller kernels to fall through.

The shelled peanuts are cleaned again to remove foreign materials. This is done with density separators, electronic color sorters and last by visual inspection by quality control personnel to ensure that only the best peanuts reach the market. The peanut kernels are then sized, graded and bagged for market.

From the shelling plant, the peanuts can be sent to the Clint Williams Custom Processing Plant (Blanching Plant) where peanuts are cleaned again and “blanched” before they are used in most peanut foods. Blanching is simply the removal of the reddish skin covering the kernels. In whole-nut or split-nut dry blanching, the kernels travel through warm air for a period of time to loosen the skins. Then the kernels go through a blanching machine where large rollers rub the surfaces of the kernels until the skins fall off. These kernels are checked with electronic color sorters and visual inspection by quality control personnel to ensure that blanching is complete.