the wonder of the cashew.....

Ever enjoyed a handful of cashews while watching your favorite movie? Well here is something to ponder ~~ how do they get from the tree to the store??

I thought today I would do my best to share the process from the beginning stages of them flowering to the point of roasting them. Many of us love cashews and wonder why they are expensive. Maybe this will help you to appreciate it the next time you open up a can! It is no wonder that they are so expensive in the stores!! (although of course i know they are factories to do the work and here on the island it is all done by hand!)

These are the flowers .... pink and delicate

Within several week we began to see the beginnings of green 'nuts' forming.

Maybe you are like me and didn't have a clue what a cashew tree looks like. I always thought they'd be like little bushes. Nope. They are huge. As I said we have about 8 trees on the property, and thus ALOT of cashews!!!



Once they drop to the ground, we had our gardener Raymond pick them up, separate the fruit from the nut, put them in the sun for a few days to dry (hoping the dogs and the neighboring kids don't traverse over them tooooo many times!)

The islanders are not wasteful so many of them use the fruit (the yellow part) to make juice.

this is our harvest of cashews!

Roasting is very dangerous because of the arsenic that is emitted during the roasting process so we opted to take ours to a 'roaster' in mud hole. She roasts them in a huge caldron, all the while careful that none of the 'juice' goes on her because if so it will burn her skin. Which means, while roasting, she wears long sleeves and long pants and in this heat that makes the job even more tedious and draining!! She normally does 2 buckets a day and we had the equivalent of 15 buckets.. alot of work!!

This is Anita, she is breaking the shell off using a stick. Since the cashews are roasted they are black and this job is very time consuming and dirty!

Once the roasting is done she takes the blackened shells and whacks them at least 3 times with a stick , just so, because you want to crack the shell without breaking the nut inside. Imagine doing that 10,000 times by hand!!!

That is why broken cashews are cheaper then whole ones!!

We haven't got our cashews back but when we do we plan on selling them and some of the money will go towards the souvenir shop that we are building. We are excited to be able to build this shop since it will give employment to artisans on the island. If you want to help with this project financially we welcome any help. Just drop us an email.

Have a great day! The next time you buy cashews think of Anita who roasts them, and pray for her strength and safety.