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It was February 1994, and it seemed that New York City was being hit by one snowstorm after another. For recent college graduates and transplanted Southerners Matt and Ted Lee, the weather only added to their disillusionment with the Big Apple and the prospects of lucrative careers in publishing and auction houses. What they craved to cure the nor'easter blues was a taste of home: a bag of boiled peanuts.

Now, hot dogs, pretzels, gyros, even roasted peanuts are easy to come by on the streets of New York.

But the one thing you're not going to find vendors peddling is boiled peanuts. So, the Lees took a guerrilla stance on the situation and decided to boil their own. But where to find raw peanuts — the greener the better — was the question.

Who in the heck are Matt and Ted Lee?

Just a couple of guys who run a mail-order catalog of Southern pantry staples, have appeared on the Travel Channel with Anthony Bourdain and the Food Network with Paula Deen and are co-authors of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook "The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-Be Southerners," which has garnered accolades from, among others, Gourmet Magazine, Food and Wine and National Public Radio's Lynne Rossetto Kasper.

But none of that was on the radar back in 1994 when they set out in search of a bag of raw peanuts.

Guided by a neighbor, a "guy who sold dry fruit and 90 varieties of roasted nuts," they drove their old BMW with the wooden front bumper from Manhattan's Lower East Side up to Hunts Point Terminal Market in the Bronx where they purchased a 50-pound yellow-mesh bag of raw Valencia peanuts.

"They were awesome, fresh green raw peanuts straight up from Florida," Ted Lee remembers.

Along the way, they picked up a 33-quart porcelain-coated tin kettle, the kind Long Islanders use to boil lobsters. They drove past the heroin dealers and junkies and hauled the bag up three flights of stairs to their rustic Ludlow Street apartment.

"It was like carrying a futon," Ted Lee says, laughing. "It can get away from you."

They commenced to boil the peanuts. The pot was so big, it covered all four burners of the tiny electric stove.

"It was a real sensory experience, conjuring up the low country," Ted Lee says. "As soon as you smell it, that aroma of boiling peanuts, it's the smell of a roadside stand, the smell of sweet potatoes, hay and tea. It's a smell you associate with good times. People eat them at the ballparks, at stock car races, on road trips."

That experience led to the beginnings of The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, a thriving mail-order business of boiled peanuts and other Southern food staples that include pickled okra, sorghum syrup and even stone-ground grits from Old Mill of Guilford in western Guilford County.

After the New York Times discovered the catalog, the orders started coming in from displaced Southerners everywhere, including someone from Los Angeles who wanted a jar of Duke's Mayonnaise or a guy in Alaska going through Texas Pete Pepper Sauce withdrawal. Even comedian Amy Sedaris ordered the brothers' first — and, as it turns out, last — jar of pickled pigs feet.

"We learned what connects these people is food," Ted Lee says.

So, it might come as a surprise that the Lee brothers are not native Southerners. Their parents moved the family from New York to Charleston, S.C., when Matt and Ted were preteens. But the adventurous brothers quickly adapted. While Matt and Ted mastered the art of throwing shrimp nets and baiting blue crabs with chicken necks, the family learned to put a meal on the table with the same ingredients their neighbors were using, the same staples they would one day so enthusiastically describe in their catalog.

And catalog sales were good. So good that the Lee brothers (Ted is 36, his brother Matt is 38) moved back to South Carolina and bought a small space in downtown Charleston to base their headquarters and be closer to their suppliers and the culture they loved.

A new turn of events occurred when Nancy Novogrod, an editor at Travel & Leisure, saw a copy of the catalog. She was so impressed with the unique descriptions that she called the Lees and asked, "Can you show our readers a part of South Carolina that is not Charleston?"

So, the Lees hit the road, driving around South Carolina, making stops at their suppliers and barbecue joints.

After the story published, they realized that perhaps they'd found their calling: writing about regional foods. But what they really desired was to go beyond the label on the jar.

"We'd grown up cooking," Ted Lee says. "My mom commuted to New York every now and then, so we helped my dad get food on the table. The experiences we had as a kid: burning our first pot of rice, cutting our fingers on shrimp shells."

The Lees, naturally curious, wanted to explore the culinary traditions of the South; they wanted to write about how the ingredients of a Southern pantry were used. Armed with clips of their stories, they went to other publications. There were some rejections, but as it happened, an editor of Food and Wine took notice of the Travel & Leisure stories and contacted them to write some food-related travel stories. Then the New York Times offered them a chance to do some stories.

"The Times said, 'We want the grits story. We want the lard story. We want the shrimp story,' " Ted Lee says. "It was really fun for us."

The Lees went on the road again through the South and beyond, writing about regional food and its place in local tradition for Travel & Leisure, Food and Wine and Martha Stewart Living.

"We took a trip to northern Florida for Food and Wine" Ted Lee says. "It was incredible. The foods there are completely different than in Charleston. In northern Florida, they have smoked mullet. For us, growing up, mullet was bait. But it was as fine as the finest smoked trout. They have incredible dried sausage. We had a chitlins experience in a woman's house. There was a pomegranate tree in someone's back yard. There were varietal honeys."

They realized how even in a designated geographical region like the South, food is "microconditional."

"The really great thing about traveling and eating in the South is you realize how exceptional food is as a day-to-day thing," Ted Lee says. "It's not all barbecue and fried chicken. It's so much more."

After a few years of collecting the stories of cooks and Southern food, they began compiling anecdotes from their travels and their own experiences growing up in the South into a cookbook.

"The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook," published last year, is not only a way for the Lees to fully embrace their adopted Southern heritage, but the journey to the book unearthed a part of Southern culture that many, including Southerners, have lost.

"We've had to tell a lot of stories in the book," Ted Lee says. "We had to tell people who we are.

We don't have a TV show. For every recipe, we had to say how we came to it. There is no grandmother, no box of recipes. So, there are a lot of stories."

The Lees even rediscovered the boiled peanut, a snack that isn't so Southern after all and is found around the world in the Philippines, Africa and particularly Asian countries.

"We went to Hawaii for Travel & Leisure and found Chinese workers boiling peanuts with star anise," Ted Lee says.

"We are so thrilled. It feels to us like Southern food is finally getting the attention it deserves.

It's a celebration of the South, of food in all its diversity, in all its interpretations."

Contact Carl Wilson at 373-7145 or cwilson@news-record.com