Matt was 11, and Ted 8, when their parents moved them from a Manhattan childhood full of H&H bagels to the creeks of Charleston, S.C., where they’d dangle chicken necks to catch crabs. After college–Harvard for Matt, Amherst for Ted–and a brief brush with the New York coat-and-tie world of art and publishing, their family joke was: “Well, we can always boil peanuts.” That they did, launching a business, The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, in 1994. They began to chronicle their experiences traveling the South, searching for products that connect folks with the foodstuffs of their childhood, food loaded with taste memory. They became magazine writers and columnists for The New York Times. The charm of boiled peanuts may elude folks looking for crunch, but their oystery, saltwater wetness acts as a madeleine on the dislocated spirits of Southern folk who gladlypay more for shipping the perishables than for the nuts themselves.
Boiled Peanuts’ world headquarters in Charleston, a single room where a ’50s Singer sewing machine still stitches each catalog, is lined with jars of preserved figs, Duke’s Mayonnaise, MoonPies and Cheerwine. Here, in this former 1800s home for Confederate widows and orphans, you feel the powerful sense of place that continues to draw the Bros. back from New York: cobblestone streets, gardens lush with live oaks, doors wide open, birdsong. Their first bound book has just arrived by UPS. The Bros. bet on the weight. “Four pounds,” Matt says with a smile, “that’s about a pound a year. Some output!” Later, in the kitchen of their mother’s house, Matt and Ted make dinner. Hearing their kitchen chat is like listening to your own head as you cook: “Teddy, where’s the salt?” Tonight’s theme “Scuppernong-arama” is straight from the book, which is to say a meal featuring that Southern grape whose “flavor is huge: a burst of nectar with hints of honeysuckle, orange flower and jasmine … " Ted infuses scuppernongs in sake (finding roots enough in Charleston’s rice wine) and glazes pork ten-derloin with scuppernongs and chilies. They can’t keep their hands off the new book, alternately marveling and looking for errors. Matt: “I don’t want to read it and wince, ever.” He won’t.
