Welcome to the Nuthouse

At one point in the recent past, we has cashews, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, and peanuts in the house. OK, smarty pants out there. I know, peanuts are technically a legume. Plus, we had Costco trail mix, which was a combination of several of the aforementioned nuts and M & Ms. I have grasped something about trail mixes: They are intentionally a high calorie snack, for the trail. Not the couch, where if one is sedentary, all the snack does is add to the gut. Hence the problem with the nuts in general. Too much, too many. There is a reason it is not called Couch Mix.


BTW, if you would like to order this lovely tray for a coming holiday event like Presidents Day, click the link. Given the state of politics, nuts would be appropriate. I thought I could handle my nuts, portion them out in a reasonable quantity, and enjoy in moderation. But, that turned out to be self-deception. I placed the listing of the nuts at the start of the blog in the order of most liked to least. I find cashews absolutely addictive, followed closely by pistachios. At least pistachios make you work some by cracking the shell. I have learned some pistachios shells just are not worth trying to crack, which has an application conceptually to some things in life in general.  

Peanuts become the nut snack if everything has run down or I am conscious of how much my nuts are costing me. Peanut purgatory. I am moderate with walnuts for some reason, even though I like them more than peanuts. An anomaly. And, I really don't care for pecans. At all. Those and Brazil Nuts, which look like giant Amazonian bugs with the head and feet knocked off.

I once ran into a devout Catholic guy down on Temple University's campus (How devout? He wore an icon of the Mother Mary on his shirt). I got to know him a bit. Me, the former Catholic; He: Trying to bring me back into the flock. He found me to be a tough nut for sure, an educated and theologically knowledgeable evangelical (a Pistachio Protestant?) who does not have a particular fondness for Catholic tradition transubstantiated into dogma without biblical merit. He said he thought that the forbidden fruit might have been a nut. At least he was not asserting that it had to be a nut which would not be justified by the Hebrew word used in Genesis. Ultimately, I disagreed with him about this relatively minor difference and a whole host of other more weighty issues.

I do find nuts tempting. They are not sinful in and of themselves. But, eating them can become sin if I lose self-control and become a hog, and eat without discipline and discretion. God's blessing become burdens if we do not appreciate them properly and with proper measure.