Spring Cleaning and The Darkest Timeline’s bright side.
More ideas for Low-to-No Waste Kitchens
Last week, I did a Food Explorer Podcast video on YouTube all about activating nuts and somehow it’s becoming one of our most watched videos so Substack is the next logical step. Why? Because Substack is a place for you interested peeps who want deeper dives, are willing to do a little reading and are great community builders - that’s what It’s all about, rIght? So grab your favourite beverage and hold on as we do a deeper dive into All About Activated Nuts: why they’re important; what are the health benefits; and why a little science might just save you from wasting food while saving you some money.
With winter gone and the darkest days of the year becoming a sunny memory, all kinds of people turn to “Spring Cleaning”. There are as many types of cleaning as people of course, but if your world is food like my world is food you’re probably going to be cleaning out some cupboards, drawers and the pantry. Hey, during the cleanup from Christmas baking did you stash some nuts in the pantry? Maybe you bought a huge bag of walnuts at Costco but only used half of it and now it’s sitting looking at you reproachfully? Before you start Spring Break baking or Easter treats, you might want to taste a few first, they should be fine, right? RIGHT?! Then why is there a sharp almost metallic taste hitting the top of your mouth and leaving it feeling a little bit abused?? Welcome to the not-so-wonderful world of rancidity. Ack! Now what? Do they have to be binned? Will extra sugar fix the taste? Will anybody be the wiser if I just use them?? They can’t make you sick, can they? What to do, what to do? Read on dear Peeps.
A long time ago in an alternate timeline, I was a raw food chef. It ended up being the darkest timeline, (leave a comment if you want to hear that story!) but one of the really valuable things I took away from that was doing activated nuts almost weekly. For example, we would get these giant 25 pound bags of Walnuts and have to store them until we needed them for the recipes we were creating. We’d have a bank of dehydrators whirring away down in the scullery but the smells and then the crunch of a perfectly done walnut when we finished were glorious! Especially because as anyone who’s bitten into a rancid pantry walnut knows - NASTY!! So they’re the perfect nut to explain the hows and whys of activating nuts in general.
Now, first things first: I need to clarify here that we’re talking about raw, unprocessed nuts. There would be no point for you to do this for nuts that are already roasted, toasted, seasoned, salted, candied, or had any other treatment done to them. This is the timeline where you get a fantastic deal when they’re in season, or smash it on coupons (props here to Bulk Bark and their e-flyers for deals!!), or the price is just too good to pass up at Costco even though you really only needed one cup …
So (with apologies to Spiderman) sometimes with great deals, come great responsibilities - we don’t want to waste our hard-earned-shopping-super deal by having them go rancid and having to throw them out!! So in the spirit of being a waste-conscious kitchen, we here at the Food Explorer Podcast are going to do our best to convince you that taking the time to activate your nuts is going to be worth it!
Simply put, living healthy lives takes a little bit of effort on a good day and a whole lot of effort when you’ve got challenges thrown in. So your time is at a premium but we’re going to show you how taking the effort to process the nuts yourselves comes with healthy rewards like they have a longer shelf life and bonus - they’ll play nice with your other nutrients! Yes, there’s health to be learned here, too. By activating nuts we actually improve their nutritional profile in not one, but two important ways - more on this later.
Okay, you saved some money and you have a stockpile of nuts but you are worried about them going rancid before you can use them all. Ready for the great news? Activating nuts is as simple as 1,2,3. Soak, Rinse, Dehydrate. Of course there are important tips, tricks, and caveats along the way but that’s what our “Activating Nuts” video is all about!
But before we go too far, let’s get to some important science. The key to good nutrition is getting those special nutrients our bodies crave because they’re so important for us to grow, heal, and regenerate. We’ve all heard of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids (we’ll call them oils to keep it simple) and these two are especially important when it comes to nuts. Take walnuts, which just happen to have the highest amount of beneficial Omega 3 oils of all the nuts - YAY! but with that there is a problem - BOO! because it’s these exact oils that most easily and quickly go rancid and produce off flavours and even smell, and gulp, even problems.
So if you ever grabbed a walnut out of the bag, bit into it and thought, “Oh good God, what am I eating?!” - that actually the taste of rancid Omega 3 oil. (Leave a comment if you want me to do a video on “Things I wish I’d never put in my mouth and NEVER will again!)
An obvious question that comes up is, ”Can we actually save nuts that have gone rancid?” Sorry, you can’t. Sugar might cover the taste, but it won’t cover the science! Heat and Oxygen over time have deformed those important Omega oil bonds enough that if we do eat them (or feed them to our friends and family) our bodies can’t quite tell the difference and will attempt to use them to build or repair new tissues with the now faulty fats. This can cause all kinds of problems from eczemas to rashes to internal problems. So rancid nuts? You have to throw them out!
That’s not the end of the science but at least the rest is good news. Activating nuts involves soaking then rinsing them which leaches and washes out two things: anti-nutrients and enzyme inhibitors. First, anti-nutrients like phytic acid are part of the nut’s natural defense mechanism against pests when growing but here they act to block your body’s ability to absorb other key nutrients including but not limited to: Iron, Calcium, and Copper. That’s also why it’s vitally important to ditch or compost the soak water: Don’t be tempted to use it! Second, enzyme inhibitors are good to avoid, as they slow processes in your body that would otherwise function perfectly fine. The removal of these two elements in the soaking stage transforms the nuts which enables your body to use them properly and efficiently plus the added dehydrating stage protects and preserves the Omega 3 oils from spoiling (and as a bonus makes them crunchy and delicious.) Yay, for yummy science!
So you’ve heard some science, you’ve decided to protect your health, your loved ones, and your investment in a mega-sized bag of nuts and that brings us full circle - back to the bright side of that darkest timeline: the soothing sounds, the delicious smells, and crisp snap provided by dehydrators.
I think, if you don’t already have one, you’d be surprised at how many people do. I’ve known lots of people that love using them to make their own healthy snacks for hiking, camping or their kids and they are a great investment to make jerky (dads and hunters, I’m looking at you). Some people get hung up here on pricing or size (we cover this a bit for our favourite dehydrator in the video: Link here) but we’re talking about a great investment here for you, your kids, your significant others and most of all your health, right?
Maybe It’s time to create a new timeline. There are so many ways and ideas to make this about more than just a chore. Think boldly, I mean why not have a dehydrator/activated nuts party? Get all your friends together to have a big old party preparing nuts for an upcoming holiday or baking season. I see this as a win-win win for everyone involved. Get together with your friends, put together all the recipes that you wanna make for the holiday season, and once all the nuts have been activated and prepared everyone gets to take some home for all their baking projects.
This could be pretty fun if you gathered everyone at somebody’s house for a book club or card game and just got all of the nuts soaking at the same time. And then you’ve got a couple of hours before the first batch will be ready to go in the dehydrator so you can start looking through your recipes gathering ingredients. Maybe we even want to start batching all the ingredients you’re going to use for your recipes. Once you get all those nuts into the dehydrator, everyone can head off to their own house. Gather up the next day at the dehydrated nut station, take them out and package everything up. Tip: you definitely want to put them in freezer bags to store in your freezer if you’ve got the space and you’re not using them right away. Another pro tip is typically you can find somebody that has one of those food saver vacuum sealer gadgets. Activating the nuts and then vacuum sealing AND cold storage is the absolute best way to really extend nuts shelf life.
A last tip before we end off - if you do not have a dehydrator, you can do this in your oven - it just requires a lot of careful observation. Make sure to put your oven on the lowest heat that it will go because when we’re activating nuts in the dehydrator, we actually have it at about 118°F. Most stoves don’t go below 170°F so you’ll have to crack the door open a little bit and monitor the process.. Once they are dried out enough, you then could go the extra step and toast the nuts at the same time in the same oven, win-win!
Well, here we are at the end of another Substack on our ideas for Low-to-No waste kitchens - How’d we do?? We want to hear from YOU - really! Feel free to leave a comment here or on our videos, it’s the feedback that we appreciate so much and your ideas keep us going. Some feedback ideas:
Do you like the Substack format?
Did we miss anything in the article? Get something wrong or a bit off?
What’s a Low=to-No Waste kitchen idea that you’d like to share or see us expand on?
What’s your experience with activating Nuts?
What’s your experience with alternate timelines?
What other activities do you collaborate on and share with your family, friends, book club buddies, church members, or whoever?
Thanks for reading!