Nutty Links

Hey all you nuts!  We heard some pretty interesting stuff about almonds, pecans, walnuts and the rest of the gang lately and we wanted to share it here.  As we thought about past stories to feature, we realized most of them are from the same news site; the research is funded by a variety of sources though.  After reading through these links, you could probably guess what station our car radios are tuned to right now!

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Walnuts improve brain performance!

Apparently a handful of nuts a day keeps the doctor away.

If you listen to NPR regularly, you may have heard the story about almonds drain on California’s already stressed water supply. They may use a lot of water, but as others are reporting, per calorie of food produced, using water to raise beef or dairy cattle is less efficient per calorie.

In Texas, groves of wild pecan trees are being cut down and plowed over to make room for specialty pecan orchards that are favored in Chinese markets.  Unfortunately this means the future of the wild pecan tree, which is also the state tree of Texas, is being threatened.

If you’re a sad sufferer of nut allergies, you may live to see a solution. Three cheers for molecular biologists!

As you know, we’re a fan of nut butters, especially homemade nutella.  This nut butter cookbook looks like an intriguing kitchen companion.

We’ll leave you with this delicious looking peanut butter snack cake by one of the cutest cooking bloggers we follow.

Happy Monday!