Nuts

We have almost survived our weekend of parties and fun, and we promise more blogs to come about our choices of drink, our stuffed burgers, our terrible meals at two local restaurants and more.

But in our utter exhaustion, all we can manage at this moment is a little discourse on our snack of choice these past few days. Nuts.

Most nuts are perfect choices on our latest healthy eating plan, so we have lately been in the habit to throw some almonds in a dish whenever friends pop by. We’ve noticed that almost everyone loves them, and they feel very guiltless, about grabbing them and munching away. Men, women, children, all love nuts.

This weekend, we branched out. We picked up some salted pumpkin seeds and roasted salted macadamia nuts from Pavilions, along with Trader Joe’s chili lime cashews and their lightly salted pistachios.

We also tried out some Emerald Marcona almonds that Amazon sent us to review for the Vine program. (Review is submitted but not posted. It said, they were fine, although we don’t like Marconas as much as the other kinds of nuts.)

Overall, we think everyone was glad to get a break from regular roasted salted almonds. Everyone seemed to like the macadamia nuts the best, and we think this is because these were really killer nuts. Large, perfectly roasted and salted, they could not be eaten in one bite. We haven’t had macadamia nuts this good since a trip to Hawaii in about 1998.

The Trader Joe’s nuts are always popular and reliable, but we need to offer some kudos to our local Pavilions grocery and its nut bar. This store recently finished a major remodel, which was disgusting to suffer through because the store was downright creepy at times. But they did add a lot of great features. The wine area is beautiful, they have nice selections of salad spinners and cookbooks and wine glasses. But the nut bar, that rivals all local groceries, including Whole Foods.

They have everything we can imagine, a lot of it pre-packed in small plastic containers. But they always have a clerk behind the bar, willing to grind the nuts or make you an almond butter or whatever. Consistently, when we serve these nuts, they get the most positive feedback.

However, we are now very weary of nuts. The idea of taking ourselves out the the ball game and getting a bag of peanuts sounds just horrible at the moment. So we think we’ll stay home instead, drink a lot of water and put the nuts away for the next social gathering.