In December, I was in Portales, New Mexico. In case you don’t know, Portales is The Peanut Basin of the Southwest. (If I could do that in “reverb” font, I would.)

I discovered this not through Portales’s excellent marketing machine, but through my own research, when a friend in high school went there for college. Frankly, I’d barely even heard of Portales. This visit in December was the second in my entire life, and during that trip I learned that while Portales produces less than 10 percent of the nation’s peanut crop, it produces the large majority of its Valencia peanuts. These little guys are known for their exceptional flavor, and their lovely red skins.

Doing my duty to guidebook research, I stopped in the chamber of commerce offices downtown. A woman asked me if I wanted “the usual info pack.” Why, yes. And did I want peanuts? Why, yes!

Those Valencia peanuts, super-salty and often four to a pod, were super-delicious, and I apologize to the Days Inn Roswell housekeeping staff who had to vacuum up the shells from the carpeting.

I managed to save some peanuts till I got home. Peter was equally enamored. Soon I was perusing the Sunland Peanuts website. And soon thereafter, more peanuts–as well as some peanut butter–were winging their way to us from the Peanut Basin of the Southwest.

I have to admit, there was a little letdown. Peter had inadvertently ordered five pounds of unsalted peanuts. But even those were surprisingly good.

And today Peter opened the first jar of peanut butter. Holy shit! So amazingly fresh-tasting. It’s like each little individual peanut soul is expiring right then and there in my mouth. Nothing in it but peanuts. Not even salt. And if I’m saying something with no salt is delicious, then you know it’s got to be good. If you like peanuts, you owe it to yourself to taste the goods from Portales.

A few tips on ordering from the mega-clunky (but awful cute) website: You want the “old fashion peanut butter,” without the hydrogenation, etc. Somewhere else on the site, they sell the processed stuff, and you don’t want that. And you probably wanted salted peanuts, rather than just plain ol’ roasted. [UPDATE: The site has been redesigned! It looks much nicer, but you can’t order online now/yet. Better to talk to a person anyway, to get the details right.]

Finally, you’ll want to bone up on the peanut butter diet, just in case you’re feeling a little dodgy about having 25 pounds of good-and-greasy legumes delivered to your doorstep. One look at those rock-hard abs, and I am pretty convinced. One bite of that Valencia peanut butter, and I am never lookin’ back!