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Saturday, November 3, 2018

Pistachio


Pistachio

An old friend’s recent Facebook comment reminded me of pistachio nuts.  Yes, they are still around, bigger and better than ever, but they have lost their personality.

Personality…nuts?

Well, sort of, they did use to be different.

Pistachios used to be red.  They were all salted, I mean really salted, soaked in brine salted.  We used to buy them from a dispensary machine, like a gum machine.  You would get a handful for a nickel. 

They were red because they were dyed red.  Why I don’t know, but we always just assumed that was their real color.  They were sometimes called Christmas nuts, red shell, green meat.  When you ate pistachios way back when, everyone knew it because your fingers and lips were stained red and stayed that way for a day or two.

Pistachios today are easy to open, you can pry most open with your fingers.  The pistachios with personality required a front tooth to pry open the tiny crevasse in the bivalve shells that guarded the nut. 

I chipped my tooth several times trying to get at the nut inside.  Some nuts had no crack to pry open and required back molar action or a hammer to open.  You then had to pick through the broken shells to pick out the meat. 

Today you can even buy pistachios already de-shelled.  Ha…spoiled people today.

The pistachios I remember were smaller than today, but they tasted better, they had a deeper flavor, if deeper is a thing, anyway they did taste better.  Of course, about every sixth nut was rotten and tasted awful.  Spit out and gulp water awful, and since they were all so tightly enclosed by their shell, you never knew if a nut had gone bad or not.

As I remember, almost invariably the last nut in every batch was somehow always a bad nut.  It took an extra nickel and a new handful to get rid of that bad nut taste.

Yes, the pistachio nut of today is bigger, easier to get at and they almost never go bad. 

Still I miss the old finger staining, tooth chipping salted nut of yesterday.  They just had personality.

22 comments:

  1. I've never bought pistachios. They've been in one type of biscuit (cookie) that I sometimes buy, but I don't eat many biscuits, so I've pretty much forgotten the pistachio part. Bought biscuits are mostly sugar flavour anyway. To get real flavour you need to make your own. I've noticed pistachios are very popular here in the Asian community.

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  2. Goodness, I had forgotten the pistachios of long ago. I do remember being very frustrated because of my inability to crack the shell. I do recall that finding a ripe nut was rare.

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  3. When i was little, we would get pistachios that were not red, and most had a small crack to stick your tooth into in order to pry it open. Everyone would go to the kitchen for two cups, one you filled with nuts, the other was to hold your shells. We would gather in front of the TV and watch something funny, like Red Skelton, and eat nuts. We'd also get Charles' Chips delivered, and sometimes we'd have those instead. Fond memories.

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  4. Here in the UK I have never seen pink/red pistachios. Ours are green inside and white shell - and salty. Very expensive though. Over £30 ($38.95) a kilo. How much are they in the US?

    God bless.

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    1. What's a kilo? These days about $9 for maybe 1/2 to a pound bag in the US.

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    2. 1 kilo = 2.20462 pounds. So, assuming a US pound (lb) is the same as a UK pound. We multiply your $9 by 4 to make a kilo at $36. That is almost the same as in the UK - $38.95 a kilo - or £30 a kilogram.

      In the UK £30 is very expensive. Do you consider $9 for 1/2 pound of pistachios as being expensive? Or is it normal compared to other purchases?

      It's difficult comparing prices. For example, here in the UK petrol (gas) is £1.30 ($1.69) pence a litre. Most of that is tax though - about 70%.

      God bless.

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  5. There was something special about "earning" pistachios. We actually have a nut store near us and every nut you could possibly want is available with no muss or fuss. For goodness' sake, BRAZIL NUTS are available shelled. It used to be you had to use blasting powder to get those things open. What a soft generation we're allowing to be raised...

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  6. The dyed color had something to do with where they originated from.

    I love 'em, and the ones that are flavored are fantastic.

    The deshelled ones are pretty expensive and not as tasty. Plus, I think about that poor third world kid deshelling pistachios 19 hours a day and can't live with myself.

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  7. My Dad used to get those red pistachios ~ he loved them. I was never a fan until about 15 years ago, and thankfully they don't dye them red anymore. I believe they discovered that the red dye wasn't particularly healthy (I believe carcinogenic is the word they used). I can't compare the two, but I do occasionally splurge. And because I see the damage that doing things like biting open a nut can do at work everyday, I prefer the shelled variety. :)

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    1. That dye may or may not have been bad for you, my recent research says the nuts used to come primarily from the mid east and the shells often had imperfections or discolorations on them, to hide those imperfections they dyed the shells. Today's nuts come more from California(?) and are plumper and without shell imperfections so they don't need to dye them...also the flavor is not quite as good IMHO.

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  8. I never cared for pistachios. I didn't have to go thought the bad ones. I'm happy about that. I didn't know they dyed them. Good grief.

    In the near future I'll have an Awww Monday filled with puppies.

    Have a fabulous weekend, Joe.

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  9. You are right. The de-shelled ones are not as tasty. Can't remember the last red one I had. Nice memory trip.

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  10. I've never had a pistachio, but I've struggled to muscle open a Brazil nut with a hinged nutcracker until I almost became unhinged.

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    1. I'm sure Hick can find you a sledge-hammer in one of his auction sheds.

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  11. I always thought they were something special because of the name, like pate de foie gras. But I like pistachios, hate pate de foie gras (when I finally tasted it.)

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  12. I had forgotten that they used to be red!!

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  13. I forgot about those. Weren't there green dyed shells as well? I once got sick after eating too many pistachios, so I avoid them now.

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  14. The wife and I were just reminiscing about red pistachios the other day. The Sears store had a "warm nut" station where Dad would buy some jumbo cashews and us kids would share some red pistachios!

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  15. Mom always said they were died because 'those people' (the pickers/processors) didn't use toilet paper to wipe ..... yes, yes she did say that.

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  16. My eldest son love pistachio and always keep them near while working on lap top

    our pistachio are still in their natural shape ,smaller and slightly cream or green colour

    we are enlarging all the things through artificial ways but we have lost their true essence

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  17. I love pistachios, but I buy the 1-1/2 pound shelled pistachios from Costco. That'll last me a few months. I'm too lazy to shell them myself.

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