Cashew History

There's a reason Maddy's Ramblings is in my interesting blogs list. He's always writing interesting posts on some topic or another, often linked to Kerala, India. Here's a kernel from his most recent post on cashew fruit.

The book The world cashew industry – an Indian perspective,’ authored by J. Rajmohan Pillai and P. Shanta, unravels the stories of ‘the poor man’s crop and the rich man’s food. “Not many of us know that Keralite’s are the pioneers of the cashew industry in the country. It is believed that cashew was first discovered by the Portuguese travelers in Eastern Brazil. Brazilians devoured the fruit but discarded the nuts. It was again the Portuguese who brought cashew to Goa and planted it along the coast to check sea erosion. The country saw processing and trading of cashew kernels take off in Kollam, Mangalore and Vettapalem in Andhra Pradesh during the 1920s,” says Mr. Pillai.

And since we're talking about India, we had dinner at Hurry Curry last night. We've had take out from there, and last time realized they also have a dining room. It's fast, good, inexpensive, but not at all elegant. And the health inspector isn't, apparently, as enamored as we are. It's also close to my mom's place.

OK, so I was experimenting. Not all experiments work. But, I'll leave it so that when I actually do ones that work, you'll realize that not all do.