Peanuts

One of my 8th grade ELL students said while reading his science chapter on stars,

S: Hey, Mrs. Brewer! There's a word in Spanish "casi" like this word "Quasar" (referring to stars).
Me: Really? What does it mean?
S: It means it's like something. Like this garlan is like the real evergreen trees.
Me: I'll look it up in the bilingual dictionary.
(I'm looking "qua...", but only see "que..." words.)
Me: Maybe it has another spelling? Like with a "k" or a "c"? So we found the word he was referring to "casi." (I'm looking at the definition): "almost, nearly"
Me: You can say: Casi nunca (hardly ever) or !Casi nada! (peanuts).
S: Peanuts?
Me: Yeah, like it doesn't cost much. It's just peanuts, or she's not making a lot of money. She's making peanuts.
S: (He started laughing a lot.) Really? That's what "making peanuts" means?

Then he told me that when he was in Texas this guy told him he was "making peanuts" at his job. He thought that this guy was not getting paid money, but getting paid (real) peanuts. He thought to himself that this job must not be very good because all this guy was getting was peanuts! We laughed a lot about that.