Better Than Boiled Peanuts?

I understood immediately when he said, ‘taste this’ that Mr. Ben wasn’t trying to trick me or wait to laugh as I grimaced.

He was sharing.  Now, he and I know and we know each other knows, the taste of the amber colored jelly that fills the bean pods of Kentucky Coffee Tree.

You peel off the husk and eat the yellow bean.

He told me to take home seeds and boil them too.  He’d done it, however many decades ago, because, ‘there were a lot of Kentucky Coffee Bean Trees on the Chapel Hill campus.’     I know, that doesn’t really answer why.   Probably because he was a forager back when foraging and Euell were cool.  He still want’s to inspire it.

“They’re better than boiled peanuts.”   That is quite a statement.

I boiled them about an hour.   Hunter and I ate them and they are indeed better than boiled peanuts.  Glad I planted two small trees two years ago.

In addition to the food, Kentucky Coffee Bean Trees make great shade, sturdy climbing trees, dangle with wisteria like flowers in spring, and the capture nitrogen from the air and put it in the ground; fertilizing other plants.

One drawback: They run.   So I planted my two trees in the lawn, where mowing will keep down the suckers.

The 8″ long, amber goo filled beans fall in the fall.

Who else has eaten boiled Kentucky Coffee Beans?  How sad is it, if we don’t get all these lessons down?   I might have spent days, picking up the big beans and throwing them away, wasting all that better than boiled peanuts goodness if Mr. Ben hadn’t have said, ‘eat this gooey brown stuff.’   Order From Woodlanders.