Macadamia Nuts: Food Crop

Macadamia is a class of nine species of flowering plants and belong to the family proteaceae. This is a evergreen trees growing to 2–12 m tall. The leaves are arranged in whorls of three to six, lanceolate to obovate or elliptical in shape, 6–30 cm long and 2–13 cm wide. The flowers are produced in a long slight simple 5–30 cm long, the individual flowers 10–15 mm long and the color is white to pink or purple, with four tepals. The fruit is a very hard woody follicle with a pointed apex, containing one or two seeds.

The nuts are a valuable food crop. Only two of the species Macadamia integrifolia and Macadamia tetraphylla are of viable importance.

Macadamias are greatly nutritious nuts. They have the highest amount of beneficial monounsaturated fats of any known nut. They also contain 9% protein, 9% carbohydrate, 2% dietary fiber, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, selenium, iron, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin. The high content of “cushiony” palmitoleic acid plus macadamia’s high oxidative stability makes it a desirable ingredient in cosmetics, especially skincare.

Macadamia is commercially produced in Australia, South Africa, Brazil, California, Costa Rica, Israel, Kenya, Bolivia, New Zealand and Malawi. Australia is now the world’s largest commercial producer – at approximately 40,000 tonnes of nut in shell per year, with a total global production of 100,000 tonnes and Brazil nuts are also very famous.

Salted Marcona Almonds: Dried Fruit

The Almond is a small tree, growing to between 4 and 10 meters, with a trunk of 30 centimeters. The young tree is green at first, becoming purplish in sunlight, then grey in their second year with leaves 1 cm long and 1.2–4 cm broad and a 2.5 cm petiole.

The fruit is a 3.5–6 cm long, with a downy outer coat which contains inside a hard shell, and the edible seed, commonly called a nut. Generally, one seed is looked, but occasionally there are two. An almond is not a true nut. The fruit is mature in the autumn, 7–8 months after flowering.

The dried fruit “almond” comes from Old French almande or alemande. The British pronunciation ah-mond and the modern Catalan ametlla and modern French amande show a form of the word closer to the almond.

Salted Marcona Almonds are considered to be the “Queen of Almonds”. They have a light, crunchy texture and are high in monounsaturated fats. They are hard to resist and make very Healthy Snacks and roughly almond-shaped, particularly a shape which is partway between a rectangle and an ellipse.