OT: Cracking Macadamia Nuts
hheaven77@aol.com (Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:01:17 PST)

Many coconut palms have been removed from the Hawaiian landscape due to cars, roofs?and people getting hit by falling coconuts.? The majestic stands of trees (if you can find them) will surely have many "Warning" signs around them warning of hazards of getting hit.? The Hawaiian government is now encouraging replanting of the palms but it doesn't seem there are many interested (maybe a liability issue?).
Celeste

-----Original Message-----
From: Judy Glattstein <jglatt@hughes.net>
To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 10:34 am
Subject: [pbs] OT: Cracking Macadamia Nuts

This happened years and years ago. A friend back in Connecticut had
neighbors who visited Hawaii and came back with some in-the-shell
macadamia nuts. Martin, the husband, was an engineer who adored this
sort of challenge. He built a hydraulic macadamia nut cracker. Two
levers, one for coarse and the other for fine adjustment. Stroke,
stroke, stroke on the coarse lever brought the piston down to the
nutshell, then stroke as needed on the fine adjustment to crack the
shell and free up the rich oily nut.

The only problem was that macadamia nuts in the shell are unobtainable
in Connecticut and the only value of Martin's contrivance was to
entertain people with a demonstration. Eventually they were down to a
few rancid nuts, but they could still be used to demonstrate the unique
hydraulic macadamia nut cracker.

My brother once told me that cashews come in clusters, surrounded by a
very thick hard shell. And that every year people are killed by falling
clusters of cashews in the shell.

Makes my New Jersey black walnuts seem picayune.

Judy
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