Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 14, 2013

and I love cashews!

She’s looking it up. Intellectual curiosity for the win!

The more you learn, the more categories of information you discover the existence of.

Wow… strange coincidence.I was the one who posted it on Ripley’s!

Raw cashews and poison ivy contain urushiol …even the smoke from heating or burning either one can be toxic.

The ones they sell as “raw” have been steamed instead, so they don’t look brown, and don’t have extra fat from “roasting”…. which is really frying.

It’s all semantics.

The most surprising thing to ME is how many people read the comments at Ripley’s.I had no idea! LOL

Weiner’s Law:

There are no answers, only cross references.

…and every one misses Frazz’s point miserably… why is that?

heard eating too many brazilian nuts can lead to a metallic overdose.

Following multiple links from RanaRavens’ link from yesterday, I found this picture in an article about Guinea-Bissau cashew exports. This really shows raw cashews fresh-off-the-tree.

                     Raw cashew nuts

For a vivid, full sized display click here.

In reading the article, I was blown away by the news that the farmers are probably only getting less than 10 cents(!) per pound for the raw nuts. Since they are so fragile, all of the harvesting has to be done manually. As there must be at least 50 nuts per pound these guys are working for almost nothing. Worse, cashews represent 80% of Guinea-Bissau’s employment and prices are falling – putting the entire country at risk.

If you are not already on overload and want to learn more about Anacardium occidentale, click here for an in-depth article from the Purdue horticulture dept.

[Note: Guinea-Bissau is a tiny country in west Africa.]

If it isn’t on the standardized test you must not waste time on it.

When I was stationed in West Africa in the 80’s, a Cote d’Ivoire Army Commander took me to a cashew “farm.” As I recall, there are seven different steps in processing, all by hand. After the initial “cooking” to remove the poisonous liquid from the exterior flesh, each individual cashew nut is placed by hand in a cashew-shaped wire cradle for clean splitting without breaking the nut fruit. At the end, after roasting, the nuts are sorted by hand into a few categories, from whole nuts to various sizes of broken ones. It is no wonder they are expensive… A couple of centuries ago, the French planted a band of cashew trees from Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) to Benin in the northern part of the countries at the optimum growing latitude. Not all are still harvested, but some are.

Where is Usually India? I know where Mumbai is.

Wikpedia gives a lot of info, among whicj Nigeria was the largest producer in 2010 with Peru second.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashews

I can attest to the mango connection to the poison ivy challenge. First time I ate one I peeled it and tried to eat it over the sink, got juice all over my face and broke out not long after. A friend enlightened me to the biological connection with poison ivy. I carefully peel with a knife now and eat small pieces with a fork!

Buy American! Eat Pecans

I tried to underline, lost my place…was trying to say that the raw cashews I tasted in Rio in 1942 at age 11 gave the worst case of ‘poison ivy’ I’ve ever had – INSIDE my mouth as well as around my lips.

Cashews are also grown in Southern California. Bet Steve Pastis knows that.

Cashew!

Bless you.

(Sorry … couldn’t resist.)

Rhubarb, too. Smells nasty and parts of it are poisonous. But the nastiest “could kill you if you do it wrong” food has got to be lutefisk.

Tried lutefisk once. Didn’t care for it; too much like having a cold.

Cashews were like a dollar a kilo in the Philippines.