Almonds, pecans, walnuts, filberts (though I always thought they were hazelnuts), and Brazil nuts, all still in their shells, occupied a large bowl in my grandparents’ living room. Beside the bowl were two handheld nutcrackers and two picks. Grandpa would sit in his easy chair at night to watch a TV Western of some kind. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Wild Wild West, or High Chaparral–it didn’t matter. If the series had gunslingers and horses, my grandfather was all in. He was all in with his bowl of nuts, cracking away, picking out the sweet meat insides, and happily snacking away until bedtime.
When I would visit my grandparents, the bowl of nuts was an enticing treat. “You have to work for them,” Grandpa would say. He taught me how to position the cracker in just the right spot, depending upon the nut. I never did master the Brazil nut, it’s a tough nut to crack. But almonds were easy, as were the filberts and pecans. Walnuts required a steady hand and precision placement of the cracker.
I learned right away that trying to crack a walnut along its seam with my child hands resulted in the thing flying across the room. “Whoa there little doggie, you’ll put someone’s eye out,” Grandpa teased. He helped me reposition the cracker across the seam. I had to use both hands to do it. It worked, though the insides were smashed to small bits.
Grandpa could crack nuts of all kinds no matter how he held them in his hand. When he cracked a walnut–along the seam mind you–it broke into two beautiful halves. He would dig out the meat and pop one half in his mouth. With a twinkle in his eye, he would pretend he was about to pop the other one in before handing it to me. I always laughed, which was undoubtedly why he continued to do it.
Nuts put a nice crunch into salad and all sorts of dishes. For Thanksgiving, I’m about to make a vegetable recipe that calls for pecans, which were my mother’s favorite nut. But, I prefer cashews. After learning how they are harvested, I finally understood why they are so expensive and why, unlike all the nuts in my grandfather’s bowl, you can’t buy them in the shell.
Peanuts, though not a nut, are also a favorite and were my dad’s go-to snack in the evening while he was watching TV. He never bought them in the shell. He didn’t want to do the work. In a nutshell, most people don’t want to or need to do the work.
Nuts of all varieties can easily be found all shelled and ready to mix into a recipe, sprinkle on a salad, or pop into your mouth one after the other as fast as you can chew them up. But, if you haven’t ever cracked your own nuts, give it a try. It’s a very satisfying, if not labor intensive, experience worth having. And if you master the Brazil nut…let me know how you did it.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2022
