>As far as the cashews, if you have to heat the pod to get the cashews out,
>then they're poisonous because of the heat applied and not due to their
>relation to the poison ivy plant.  (Or maybe not.  Maybe Mother Nature made
>them poisonous because she knew it would be harmful for us to eat them.)

Indian children turn around the problem by burrying the nuts to sprout them
and come back in the spring to eat them. I successfully ate cashew nuts raw
from the tree by cutting the shell with a knife and being carefull of not
getting oil on my fingers ( the shell contains  pocket of toxic oil ) the
cashews in store are so processed ( even the ones sold raw) and the ones
coming from India are treated with DDT .

>  Can we make a list of legumes?  So far we have corn (or is this
considered
>a grain), cashews, peanuts, beans (e.g. soy, pinto, etc...).

except peanuts they all are not legumes. legumes is a group of plants
producing pods like peas, chickpeas, lentils, peanut, scotch broom or carob,
honey locust etc all have a very specific form of flower ( like the pea)
jean-claude