Christmas Crackers!

Fancy growing your own Christmas nuts? Native species like hazelnuts (including cobnuts and filberts) will do best, though walnuts and sweet chestnuts will also crop well in warmer years. Almonds and brazils, though, need sunnier climes.

According to a 1998 walnut cookbook, NASA used pulverised walnut shells as insulation in the nose cone of rockets. Whether or not that’s true, the space agency has certainly made use of the ground-up shells as an abrasive to clean combustion deposits from boilers and

gas turbines.

There’s a lot of nutrition in those tiny packages. Just five or six brazil nuts provide a full day’s requirement of selenium – a mineral needed to support a healthy immune system.

Minor scratches in wooden furniture and floors can be repaired with nuts. Cut a brazil nut in half and rub the oily surface over the scratch. Rub over with your finger to let the oil sink in to help disguise the blemish. Walnuts work well, too.