NATCHEZ — It was a rainy, overcast day, and Tonya Roberts didn’t feel like going too far from home.

When the Dart found Roberts on Janice Circle Saturday, she was in the kitchen cooking cornbread, chili and rice, while her husband Michael and son Lane Galbreath were hanging out in the carport, boiling peanuts.

“I saw what it looked like outside, and I said, ‘I want to do something where we can stay home and have fun,’” Tonya said.

The thing they could do as a family was the peanut boil, an activity the family had only attempted once before.

“When we did this last year, we did it in the back yard, but we had to move it into the carport because of the rain today,” Tonya said.

After putting the peanuts in a cooker filled with water and Louisiana crab boil, it was time to wait and keep one eye on the cooker and the other eye on the Texas Longhorns versus Wyoming Cowboys game on television.

“It takes a couple of hours to get (the peanuts) done just right,” Michael said.

At one point during the wait, the peanuts boiled over, something Michael said he just took in stride.

“We boil over whenever we cook anything,” he said.

Even after the actual boiling is done, the longer you can let the peanuts sit and soak, the better, Michael said.

“They soak up the seasoned water and that’s what makes them really good,” he said.

At first taste, the peanuts were salty with just a hint of cayenne pepper.

But Tonya’s daughter, Juliana Galbreath, said she was holding out on tasting the peanuts to allow them to soak up as much boil so that, when she cracked one, she could eat the peanuts and drink any juice that was left in the shell.

“It really does taste good,” she said. “I like the juice.”