Having taken up a new post with a company, I soon found myself unexpectedly travelling on a business trip to Utah in the USA with 3 men and two women I barely knew.  Being new to the company and not knowing the people well, it is fair to say I was not enjoying myself much, until peanuts appeared on the scene.

The company we were meeting had its headquarters in Ogden, Utah.  The business meetings were spread over two days.  The first series of meetings were not very productive so, we agreed with our hosts to call it a day around 4 in the afternoon and promised to meet again the following morning to try again.  The company president kindly arranged for a stretch limo to take us sightseeing in the surrounding area, which was reasonably interesting.

We asked the driver to take us somewhere we can have good steak.  She drove us to Washington Boulevard and dropped us at an eatery called Sizzlers, or some similar name.  The place was decked out as though it was a Wild West saloon.  We were led to a nice large table and the six of us settled down and began to study our menus.

Surveying the almost empty restaurant, I noticed that each table had a large old-fashioned tin bucket full of peanuts in their shell.  I wondered out loud if the peanuts were roasted.  Someone wondered if they were real as they were very white and fat.  Another said they were probably raw and placed there for a decorative effect.  Finally, one of the women suggested one of us men tried one and reported to the rest of us.

Having started the debate, I felt duty-bound to be the first to put his life on the line and take one for the team, so to speak.  I reached out and picked one up, broke the shell and took out the fattest peanut I have ever seen.  I inspected it for a while and with 5 pairs of eyes trained on me with anticipation, I threw the peanut in my mouth and crunched.  I chewed in silence for a few seconds.  The younger woman could not bear the tension anymore and asked: Well?

I opened the rest of the shell and picked out the twin peanut to the one I had just consumed and threw that one into my mouth too.  That was a good enough answer to my unfamiliar companions and one by one; they picked a peanut, shelled it and crunched.

– These peanuts are great!

– I know, amazing!

– I don’t think I ever had better peanuts

– Nor me

– Let’s get another bucket form the other table

For the next 15 minutes or so, we ordered our drinks and food while crunching those amazing peanuts and went through two large buckets before the first orders were delivered.  The area around our table looked like a disaster scene with remnants of peanut shells strewn around our ankles; it was quite embarrassing.  The trouble was, we had eaten so much peanuts, we hardly had room in our stomachs for the starters, let alone the large steaks we ordered, which when put together, would have constituted half a full grown cow!

The following day, our meetings improved significantly and we concluded our negotiations with a memorandum of understanding to do business together in the future.

Here is my memorandum of understanding: For as long as I live, I doubt if I will ever eat nicer peanuts than those I had in Ogden, Utah, USA.