Hilary and Dori are right about nuts. The best way to find out how rancid (or simply stale) your nuts are is to compare them with fresh nuts, straight off the tree. We have a walnut tree in the back yard and the difference in flavour, weight and texture between my home grown nuts and those from shops is remarkable. With walnuts, for example, I choose to eat the tough, fibrous, bark-like partitions between the nut segments in my own nuts. I have tried this with bought nuts and I might as well be eating firewood. Also, my own nuts have black marks on the shells whereas most of those in shops have been bleached. Bleached! It's only after you eat the fresh food - any food - that you realize how second-rate the stuff is we get in the shops. Even city-dwellers can play this comparison game: grow your own tomatoes in a large pot with excellent, continuous care regarding sunlight, shade, moisture and organic soil. If you choose an heirloom variety and then compare its fruits with specimens from the supermarket, the same thing applies: the differences are startling. Keith