The $19 bag of mixed nuts grabbed my attention at the grocery store and it was bypassed quickly because, after all, who would pay such a high price for mixed nuts.
When we unpacked the bag at home less than an hour later, it was reverently set aside to be opened at a more auspicious occasion, that being closer to the season when it was traditional to offer such foodstuffs to guests, all the while hoping they wouldn’t pick out the best of what the package had to offer.
According to the description on the bag, it contained, by number, peanuts, cashews, almonds, brazil nuts and filberts. And these nutmeats were salty and sweet, both things to be avoided for some diets while at the same time being embraced by other weight-loss programs.
Weight loss was not top-of-mind when that $19 amount was handed over for the bag of nuts. Taste and tradition won hands down, but once some of the bag was transferred to a peanut dish, it became apparent that my favourite nut was again on the short end of the count, despite declarations to the contrary.
In a totally unscientific study, a tablespoon was used to prove what I already knew: cashews were not being given the respect they deserved as far as numbers were concerned.
In that tablespoon, peanuts lived up to their billing as the top dog in the bag. In second place came unskinned, whole almonds, followed by whole brazil nuts and one whole filbert. Missing from the control unit was any form of cashew nut.
A second test proved my point: someone had obviously miscounted or had discounted the popularity of the cashew. Worse even was the suspicion that the factory worker had set aside most of the cashews for personal consumption, never once thinking a consumer somewhere would have nothing better to do than count nuts at the holiday season.
It took three tries before my tablespoon came up with the unmistakable shape, that of a partial cashew, not a whole one, but a piece of one half of a whole cashew — in other words, one-quarter of a cashew. It took some mixing and spoon-diving before a whole cashew appeared.
In my mind — that at one time had received top marks in basic math and then in algebra, but not so hot marks in physics — I concluded that in order to maintain the fabrication that cashews were second only to the peanuts, someone at the factory was paid to break most of the cashews into pieces before the count took place.
Of course I have no proof, just my suspicions, but as my Mom used to say: “there’s something fishy here.”
Fishy indeed.
In order to enjoy a fistful of my favourite nut, I used the spoon to carefully fish out as many pieces of cashews as I could find, set them aside and when satisfied I had collected all the quarters and eighths and halves in the dish, I ate them slowly in order to savour their distinctive taste and flavour.
Now I know how prospectors felt in their search for those elusive flakes of gold. At least my cashews are edible — one tiny piece at a time.
Joyce Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
