Cashews

M.C. asks, "Oh I mean Miss Kitty or even MISS KITTY. I am on my phone and don't have the patience to find the right location for Kitty questions. So here goes. Dear Miss Kitty. Why are cashews so damn tasty?"

Hi, M.C. Love you. *smooch*

Cashews are probably my favorite nut. I think a lot of it had to do with their scarcity when I was a kid. We always had peanuts around, but we'd only ever have cashews in the fancy nut mix served at holidays and stuff. Because cashews are expensive. For real, yo. And rightfully so. They are typically imported from far-off lands and are therefore much more expensive than the nuts grown right here at home.

I will admit that I had to do a little research on cashews in order to get backup for what my original answer was going to be and assuming that Wikipedia is correct (which, how could it not be?) the cashew is almost as much a superplant as soy or corn. They make medicines and antifungals and corrosives and varnishes and anti-venoms and booze out of the various parts of the plant. And sometimes, when you're going after the nut (which is actually a seed, like the pit in a peach), you have to wear gloves so you don't burn your hands off. Good fun, those cashews.

So maybe they're tasty because we all know in the back of our minds that there is nothing this plant can't do. This does not hold true for tofu, however, which you have to slather in something that has some flavor to make it edible. I love me some tofu - tofu is my friend. But on it's own, it is not particularly tasty. I'd tell you to try it, but why? I'd rather you try tasty tasty tofu so you can learn to love it as I have.

So I thought about the very little bit that I know about cooking and I know that there are three things you can add to just about any food to make it tastier - fat, salt, or bacon (because it contains both fat and salt). Cashews are a pretty fatty nut (seed). If you break their nutritional information down into carbs, fats, and protein, they are 66% fat. Going back to our original statement, we've just added a hell of a lot of fat to a nut, so it's going to be tasty. Then, typically, when you buy cashews in the store, they have been roasted (which brings out the buttery goodness of the nut) and salted which DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! hits the other thing that you can do to food to automatically make it taste better. You've got fat and salt infused into a buttery delicious little nut. What's not to like?

Now, you take those babies and cover them in chocolate and...

Sorry. I've just lost all focus.

Thank you, M.C. for your question! Keep 'em coming, guys! askmisskittyanything@gmail.com