2 cups roasted pistachios
½ tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
Vegetable oil
Place nuts, salt, and sugar in a food processor and blend until you have a rough clump. Add 1 teaspoon of oil at a time and process until it reaches the creamy texture you want.
Taste Test: Roasted Pistachio Nuts vs. Pistachio Nut Butter
How do roasted pistachios, like you buy in the store, and pistachio butter taste different? Observe and taste a sample of roasted pistachio nuts. Make a list of adjectives to describe the taste. Repeat with a sample of pistachio butter. Compare and contrast the roasted pistachios to the pistachio butter. How can you use pistachio butter?
Standards: ELA – Grade 3: Writing 2.2; Written and Oral English Language Conventions (WOLC) 1.2; Grade 4: Writing 1.3; WOLC 1.1,1.2; Grade 5: WOLC 1.1; Grade 6: WOLC 1.1,1.4
Practical Pistachio Production
Pistachios are native to Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey because of the low mountains and barren, dry foothills in the elevated deserts. To produce at maximum capacity, trees need long, hot, dry summers and moderately cold winters.
Imagine this...
Learn more about pistachios by reading the award-winning story “Peter’s Journey” by Brook Jensen. Brook received statewide recognition for her short story about growing and harvesting the practically perfect protein. To learn more, visit www.LearnAboutAg.org/imaginethis/ pistachio.
Did You Know?
It takes six years for a pistachio tree
fruit and 20 years to o produce its first reach full production! If well-cared for, pistachio trees can produce nuts for more than a century.
1929
William E. Whitehouse entered Persia (Iran) to obtain pistachio seeds.
1929-1930
Whitehouse explored Persia and collected 20 pounds of individually selected pistachioseeds, which he planted in Chico, CA.
1930-1950
3,000 trees grew from 20 pounds of seed. However, only one tree proved to be useful.
1950s
The successful pis- tachio tree seed was named Kerman for the famous carpet- making city near Rafsanjan in Iran.
In the Know 'bout H20
The California Delta is the largest estuary in North America. It supplies clean water to 25 million people and more than 3 million acres of farmland in California.
Activity: Nutrition
Convert the tally chart into a double bar graph using one color for fiber and another color for protein.
Protein Fiber
Almonds Pistachios Walnuts
Standards: Mathematics – Grade 4: Statistics, Data and Probability 1.3, Mathematical Reasoning 2.3; Grade 5: Statistics, Data and Probability 1.2, Mathematical Reasoning 2.3; Grade 6: Statistics, Data and Probability 2.1, 2.2, Mathematical Reasoning 2. 3 Fiber