Day 4 #100DaysOfThoseDays

Today is National Pistachio Day

(Lucy does not feel like being creative today.)

I was in my late teens when I first heard of pistachio nuts. In those days we had salted peanuts. When the notions set in, we then had dry roasted peanuts.

The dry roasted with their strong flavour were more for the hardened nut lovers in my opinion. They came in a bigger bag and they were a bit more expensive too. They weren’t for me to be honest. I missed all the salt.

Nuts were a huge part of our Halloween night. Not KP salted – you could get them any day of the week.

The Halloween nut bowl contained a mixture of monkey nuts, hazel nuts, brazil nuts, almonds and walnuts. (No pistachios) The shells on the monkey nuts broke quite easily in your hand. The others required a lot more pressure than the squeeze of small fingers.

Now, I don’t know when nut crackers were invented but they didn’t exist in our part of the world in the early 70’s. If you’re my neighbour reading this and you had a real nutcracker, then you obviously kept it hidden from the rest of us.

We used a hammer or a rock. There was a skill to it. Hit too hard and your nut was mulch. Too soft, it wouldn’t crack. You had to have a good aim too. The process often ended in bruised fingers and thumbs. And we won’t go into detail about what happened when the hammer banged off the floor leaving a split in the good linoleum!

“Get out… yous and your fecking nuts!”

I saw lads that could break the nuts with their teeth – the same lads are toothless now.

At least the pistachio nuts come ready split and there’s no need for proper nut crackers, or broken teeth.

Thank you for reading!

I enjoy writing about times gone by. My daily posts are written off the cuff and just for fun.

My novel Secrets in the Babby House is of a more serious nature and took more time and effort to put together. If you enjoy the jist of my writing you might enjoy reading my novel.

A story of love, deception, and stolen diaries filled with sins and secrets. Set in a gossipy small town in Ireland at a time when marriage is for keeps and sexuality is repressed, Secrets in the Babby House is a family saga over three decades that starts in 1956. 

Available on Amazon, buythebook.ie and Barnes and Noble

Here’s an Amazon preview if you’d like check it out!

Some of my posts may contain affiliate links, and I may be compensated if you make a purchase through these links.