Chip and Dales

mary

Mary Vergara used to come to our house every couple of years. She was a friend of Mama and Papa. She lived in Hawaii and had a son named John.

Every single time she would come to the Philippines, she would bring over a case of Mauna Loa Macadamia nuts as her pasalubong for Mama and Papa.

Mama was hmmm, how do I say this..."extremely practical." She used to cut up chocolate pieces, specially her favorite chocolate "turtles" into three or four more pieces so that the chocolate would last longer. Eating a whole chocolate would be such a waste when a third satisfies the craving.

The same applied to those nuts. She would give out only one nut apiece for each grandchild. If you were smart, right before you put your hand in the canister, you peered through it very quickly to see where the ones where the whole nut was. If you didn't you'd just as likely get the teeny 1/4th of a piece which were liberally scattered about.

Now everyone knows you can't give a person just one nut...it's like giving a person one potato chip...you want more...you crave more...your NEED MORE.

Which is why, we shamelessly admit to occasionally sneaking into Mama's room for just "one more nut." This time making sure we got the whole piece.

Making this last was a huge deal. I didn't just pop the nut into my mouth, I would scrape it's sides to "grate" it to make it last. I still do it to this day...HUGE eating disorder there. People look at me strangely as I nibble through the nut eating "layers" where no layer naturally exists.

I think this may be also why the Macadamia Nut is one of Carlos' favorites, if not the favorite.

Strange how our habits were formed by odd incidents of our youth...though Mama really really would have preferred to teach us better studying habits or some such other valuable personal behavior ...rather than inadvertently schooling us to learn weird nut eating techniques.

Oh well.