Dedicated to lovers of cracking nuts.
What do you think is a nut? Is it such a fruit or the name of a plant? But now we'll figure it out.
People love nuts no less than squirrels. And they do it right, since nuts contain many useful substances and it is not only tasty, but also healthy.
It is impossible to tell everything about nuts in one article. Why? First, there are several dozen types of them. And secondly, you can write about them endlessly. And it's not just about beneficial properties and places of growth.
We will tell you about nuts in an interesting and informative way. Go!
What is a nut? This is a fruit with a hard shell - this is how 95% of people will answer. And they will be right, but not quite.
It is much more correct to say that a nut is a plant of the nut family, which has fruits with a hard shell and a nut-seed inside.
An important point! Not only nut plants have such a fruit, but also many other plants on the planet. However, they are not nuts.
Walnut - not from Greece?
True. The name of walnuts has nothing to do with Greece. Many centuries ago, it was the Greeks who brought the first nuts to us, and so the name stuck.
Walnuts are native to eastern countries and Asia. The tree of this nut can live up to 200 years. But on Earth there are trees still bearing fruit, which are from 400 to 1,000 years old.
There is a legend that these walnut trees used to be incredibly huge, as they reached almost 30 meters in height and their trunks were up to 10 meters in circumference. Legends say that a whole detachment of horsemen up to 200 people could hide behind them.
Walnut kernels are similar to the human brain. And they are really good for him.
Herodotus (ancient Greek historian) claimed that in ancient Babylon the high priests forbade eating such nuts ordinary people, just because they were afraid that the parishioners would suddenly grow wiser and come up with a way to overthrow the priests themselves or king.
Cashews are a nut for the queen!
These nuts should only be peeled by professionals, so if you do not have the necessary knowledge and skills, you can easily burn yourself with them. What? Burn yourself with a nut?
Yes exactly. Cashew shells contain cardol, a very toxic substance. It is neutralized only during heat treatment, that is, it is scalded with boiling water or boiled before being delivered to stores.
Believe it or not, once the English Queen Elizabeth II even organized a real detective investigation in Buckingham Palace for the sake of finding her favorite cashew nut.
What happened? Here is how it was. In the corridors of the palace, there are always many beautiful cashew plates and vases, especially for the august persons. When the queen or her relatives moved around the palace, along the way they treated themselves to these nuts.
And then a strange thing happened: the contents of the vases suddenly began to disappear right before our eyes, although it seemed like "nobody touched the nuts."
The detectives rushed to the palace and conducted a thorough investigation, looking at all CCTV cameras to find an invisible thief or ghost.
The results of the special investigation did not please Elizabeth II and Her Majesty had to write with her own hand and send a note to all employees of the palace security service with a request: “with your dirty hands, do not climb. "
Pistachios - why and to whom are they smiling?
Probably many have already heard that pistachios are sometimes called "smiling nuts". Why do you know? It's all about calories. There are so few of them in these nuts that they help to keep a smile on the faces of all beauties, as well as slender figures and beautiful skin.
In fact, the pistachio is not a nut at all, since the pistachio fruit is a drupe, like a cherry or an apricot.
In spring, clusters of green fruits appear on pistachio trees, then they gradually harden and turn red. Further, the shell-pulp hardens and bursts, revealing a greenish-lilac fruit. This is pistachio.
Even the ancient Greeks mentioned the pistachio tree. It has been known since the time of Alexander the Great, who also loved to feast on pistachio nuts.
Legendary gourmet Mark Gabius Apicius, who lived in the 1st century AD. during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, included pistachio in his cookbook. Yes, he is the one who is often called the "father of cookery".
Seneca wrote that Apicius eventually got so carried away that he wasted all his fortune, and when he had no money left for delicacies and only had enough for ordinary food, he was out of grief took poison.
Apicius enriched not only ancient Roman cooking with new inventions, including recipes with pistachios, he became even more famous after his death.
Under the name Apicius, during the decline of the Roman Empire, there was a very popular cookbook in ten parts about the preparation of incredibly expensive and gourmet dishes. And there were nuts, and not only pistachios.
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