Nutoholism.

If I had to get a word that defines best my food habits, I'll make it "nutoholic". I was encouraged to make a Seed and Tuber blog for a reason. I love nuts! Of course, they're so greasy, but also so tasty, and they are so different from one an other!

Nuts are fatty, we all agree on that, but nuts are also very powerful ingredients. Proof: the national peanut board has made a series of advertisements that describe peanuts as the best, healthy thing in the world: I was delighted to read that "Peanuts have more antioxidants than broccoli, carrots or green tea". I was shocked the first time I saw these in the subway, but I realize after that with all the bad advertisement that peanut get from the 1% of the population that is allergic to peanuts (they even can't certify that the chicken I buy is peanut-free....) they probably have a dramatic decrease in their sales. And it is critical in North America, where peanuts are almost first ingredient produced and eaten (after corn...). It is decriminalization of peanut!

Here are a few examples of nuts you can find in my cupboard. Soy, sunseed, pumpkin seeds, almonds, Brazil nuts, hazelnut, pistachio, peanuts, pecans, walnut, chestnuts, Sasha inchi seeds, Fenugrec, flax and poppyseeds.

But from what I just described, these are not all nuts from the biological point of view. A nut is a dry fruit with one seed where the female ovary wall became hard (yes, plants have male and female counterparts, sometimes on one plant, sometimes on two separate) and the seed (result from fertilization) stayed trapped in that hard shell. The seed itself is actually a little dot at one end of the fatty part. The seed will grow a plant using the nutrients that are stored in the fatty yummy part.
Almonds, pecans, walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, peanuts, pine nuts and pistachios are not botanical nuts because the edible part is the actual seed itself. Hazelnut and Chestnuts are true nuts.

Now what do you know about peanut? Do you have to dig in the soil to find the peanut shell? Do they grow high in trees? 

What do you know about flax? What does the flower look like? It's full of fibers and Omega3, and its oil was used to polish paintings and furnitures.

What do you know about fenugrec? Did you know it was used as anti-cholesterolemia alternative medicine? (That's actually how I discovered it, 13 years ago. Thanks Andréine!)

Did you know that eating raw non processed cashew nuts could kill you? The shell contains a highly toxic compound; that's why all the cashews that we eat have been thoroughly, delicately extracted from their shell and roasted. That makes them twice as more expensive than any other nut.

I could do the same for the others, but you can do it without my help.

But how do I eat nuts? Well, almost at every meal and in every circumstances: from raw in my hand to a curry, in salads, in cakes, on pies... they are perfects for snacks, as appetizers, mixed in a smoothie... But I tend to keep myself away from nut butter: a/ because it's processed food; b/ because it reminds me of watching Meet Joe Black with a friend (that overall is more a good than a bad memory); and c/ because even if I only eat a teaspoon of it, it magically immediately makes me fat.

Bon appetit!