Cashews are Expensive...

Do you know why? Kyle does. In order to enjoy these sweet, smooth nuts, someone along the way was exposed to urushiol, a toxin skin irritant.

Here is a cashew tree. Beautiful huh?

Here is the marañón (or cashew apple) with the cashew growing from the bottom. The fruit is edible, although technically it is a fake fruit because the seed does not grow on the inside. It has a sweet, mouth drying flavor with soft outer skin.

In order to process the cashew, one must pick the nut from the fruit, put on long sleeves, long pants, a mask, and gloves. Although we didn't know about the protective wear. The shelled nuts must be heated (in our case roasted on the stove until they catch on fire) to break the outer shell off. Urushiol (the toxic skin irritant) lives inside the shell around the actual nut. Urushiol is the same chemical/oil that is found on poison ivy, poison sumac, poison oak, and in the skin of mangoes. Yes mangoes. Unfortunately for us, we did not know this nor did we know about the protective wear. We also did not know that once it is burned, the chemical goes airborne. We also did not know the oil does not completely go away once scorched meaning we should not peel open the cashews with our hands. But boy was it fun!! Eating raw cashews right out of the shell!!

To top it off, Kyle and our roommate Patrick are both extremely allergic to poison ivy which means they are also extremely allergic processing cashews. Immanuel got away with a few burns on his lip and cheek scabbing over by the next day. Luckily and apparently, I'm not allergic to urushiol, so I was able to play nurse all week.

The result: 5 miserable days, 2 days in the hospital, lots of hydrocortisone in iv bags, a few more injections, and lots of itching. Oh and Patrick passed out in the hospital on the way to the bathroom with no one around.

Urushiol is why cashews are more expensive than peanuts.