Cashew post No 3 (and the final one, I promise !)

Ok, this is for all you cashew lovers out there. The following quote has been lifted from an email I've just received from Mikal Nolan. Mikal is a volunteer who is now in Zambia but up until very recently worked with a cooperative of cashew nut producers here on Flores so is well placed to provide some more information about this unusual creature...   
 

"Cashew season is upon you on Flores!  From your pictures, the fruits should be ripe in October-ish.  The green 'fruit' (actually the pseudo-fruit) turns red, orange, or yellow (see attached foto).  At that point it's edible and makes a tasty wine.  But the 'nut' (the real fruit) isn't mature quite yet.

The fruit and nut mature at different rates.  So the nuts are harvested from the ground once the fruit has fallen from the tree.  Soon you'll start

to see kids making piles under the trees.   

The farmer must decide between the locally consumed fruit or exporting the high-value nut.  Take a guess which tends to be the popular choice.  A shame really because it's almost as if we nut consumers are robbing the locals of the nutritious culturally rich fruit... but theoretically they'll have higher incomes to go to the market.  Win-win it's not. 

The edible bit is inside the hard shell... it's a difficult nut to crack :-) with a sticky black oil between the outer and inner 'nut'.  Did you try opening it?  BE CAREFUL... some (conveniently like myself) are allergic to the this sticky bit resulting in an itchy mess.  It's amazing how many farmers have NEVER tasted the cashew nut!  Partly because it requires a bit of skill to get to and partly because of the 'high' value.  Cashews are a fortune in the shops... right?  But on Flores the farmers get a market price of Rp 5.000-8.000/kg for the whole nut (with out cracking it) depending on the season, quality, and size.  Roughly it's a 4:1 ratio for unprocessed and ready-to-eat nuts... I'll let you do the math, but assuredly it's not a hell of a lot of money."

(Additional note : for info, €1 = approximately Rp14,500 so Rp5,000 - Rp8,000 = €0.35 - €0.55)