What You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Cashews

This week has been the week of burns! I have been dressing, cleaning and redressing burn wounds on a number of young children all week - some more severe than others and all kept home until the family realized the toothpaste they were smearing on the wound (a common practice here) was not helping and the wound had become seriously infected.
The worst was a 2 year old little boy who had burned his entire stomach, 2 weeks before, while he and his family were roasting cashews. His stomach was charred, swollen and full of pus. It took everything I had to hide my tears as the little one cried and screamed “doucement madame, doucement” (gently madame, gently) while I cleaned his wound.
I first saw him Monday and have seen him again both Wednesday and today and am happy to report that his burn is healing beautifully and the little boy almost likes me now (especially after I gave him a balloon and stickers that I had brought with me from Canada!)

Cashews, by the way, are not only a burn risk (especially to unsupervised children) they are a whole lot of work too! Like many of you, we’ve often grumbled over the seemingly high cost of cashews…but no more!
The following are the steps a person needs to take to for us to enjoy the taste of a single cashew.

Step 1: Plant cashew tree – cashew trees usually bear fruit 3 times a year



The dispensaire has a number of cashew trees planted amongst the mangoes and many families have a few trees of their own in a very large cashew orchard several kilometers south of Niaguis (following a dirt path into the bush). Notice a single cashew hangs from each ‘apple’.

Step 2: Harvest ‘pomme de cajous’ (cashew apples) with their attached cashew



In order to ensure the largest cashews and the sweetest apples, you have to wait for the cashew apples to ripen and fall to the ground – which makes for painstaking work of searching for and gathering only a few cashews at a time. The cashew nut is separated from the apple (you only get one nut per apple) and the apples either eaten fresh or pressed to make juice/alcohol. The apples are VERY juicy and the juice is potent – a little juice dripped onto your clothes stays there for life!

Step 3: Roast cashews



Cashews are covered with a thick green husk that is apparently best removed if burned. So the cashews are placed in either a tin can with holes punched in the bottom or on any other piece of metal a person can find, and roasted over a fire. After only a few seconds over the fire, natural juices in the cashew will ignite and the cashews become engulfed in flames. Stir to ensure even ‘roasting’ of the cashews – you have to be careful all is charred but not overcooked (very important). Quickly take off of fire and toss with sand to extinguish fire and cool cashews.

Step 4: Shell cashews

My least favorite step for a number of reasons –
1. you get full of char which is really hard to wash off
2. you have to hit the nut with just the right pressure if you still want some cashew left to eat when you get the shell off - there is a reason we pay more for whole cashews!
3. if the cashews aren’t grilled just right, the juices, which are toxic to your skin, are absorbed by your skin during shelling and will later burn a layer off…be careful with your lips too! AND lastly,
4. it takes a long time to shell just a few! - 10kg of cashews (which we bought for 150 cfa/kg = 35 cents/kg) took a group of us 2 nights to shell and yielded about 2 kg of nuts!

Step 5: Apply cortisone cream twice daily until healed



Ok…maybe this was my least favorite step. Not sure if it was a reaction to handling the cashews, eating them, or both but my finger tips all peeled, my fingers blistered (that's actually a picture of my finger...but it's back to normal now) and I have a mean looking rash that has been with me for over a 2 weeks! But boy are the cashews tasty :)

So…the next time you find yourself enjoying a cashew, savour the moment - a lot of work went into preparing that cashew for you!