In our office, the shipping and receiving guy, Mike, is the local junk food entrepreneur. An entire shelving unit in his office is filled with snack items which run the gamut from candy bars to chips to nuts to dried meat. Mike’s prices are reasonable, especially since his little “honor system” payment cup is usually filled with IOU’s. (Not from me … I refuse to go into debt for junk food!)
Mike recently added a new item to his menu, pistachio nuts. I like these. A few years ago I worked with a British fellow named Neal, whose father-in-law used to send him big bags of pistachios at the holidays, not knowing that Neal absolutely hated them. (I haven’t used your last name, Neal, so you’re still in the clear.) The nuts would end up in a big bowl in our shop and would disappear in a day. Ever since then they’ve been a favorite snack. This is why it’s a problem that they’re now so readily available.
Pistachios come to us, the consumer, in their own natural shells. The roasting process makes the shells split open at the seams, and this leaves a crack where you can insert your fingernail and pry the shell apart. Unless you are a freak of nature, this process takes two hands. Therein lies the problem.
It is virtually impossible to get productive work done while eating pistachios. It takes a good five seconds to pry open the shell, extract the nut meat, eat it, and drop the shell halves somewhere. During this time, I am totally non-productive. I haven’t quite worked out the ratio of time shelling pistachios to time working, but it’s bound to be significant. I probably could have typed this blog in 25% less time if I’d not been so pistachio-distracted.
At the moment, I am fairly depressed, and when I’m depressed I tend to eat, and when I eat I tend to eat some more. Combine that with the sudden availability of large quantities of pistachios and the effect on my work habits could be quite dangerous. My boss may come in one afternoon and find me buried under a mound of pistachio shells, accomplishing nothing, and see fit to fire my worthless ass (arse, for those of you across the pond.) I will then lose not only my job, but my convenient supply of pistachios. Disaster!
What I need is the ability to de-shell pistachios with one hand. Any suggestions will be appreciated, and acknowledged as soon as my hands are free.
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freak
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The vile hippies at Trader Joe’s sell organic pistachios, and I, being a vile hippie, buy them. Well, I *used* to buy them. You see, organic pistachios are grown without pesticides. The precognitive among the audience are already throwing up.
So I’m absent mindedly shelling pistachios and eating them, right? I shell one, and am in the process of lifting it to my mouth when I notice that the nut feels different. I hold it up to inspect it and boom.
Navel orange worm. (http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r605300111.html)
Out comes the torch, burn goes the worm, and that’s that. Of course, I still had two thirds of a bag of pistachios left, and I somehow convinced myself that it was a fluke. It wasn’t, of course. When I found the third worm I burned the entire bag.
I don’t buy pistachios from Trader Joe’s anymore.
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2 things :D.
1. across the pond we refer to the arse as ass “ass”well.
the only differing in meaning in words for an ass, is Fanny in america, a fanny across the pond is a vagina.
2.. there isnt an easy way around your issue…
de-shell your nuts before hand…
use your break time to re-stock on de-shelled nuts…
buy a monkey to pry them open for you?
tell your boss its bring your kids to work day, and use them like a monkey.
dont have kids? find one at a nursery, i hear their very common there.
you could even let the worms open the nuts for you 😀
but yeah.. i’d change brand if i was you.. bigger brands are allways better :D. cause in the land of the free, home of the brave, you can sue them that much harder :).