Salt or fresh?

Nuts have been part of Trini sporting events for many, many years. Trinis love their football and cricket and as nail-biting as the games are, eating something heavy will not do. Nuts, however, salt and fresh, plain or honey-roasted and pelted up into the stands of the Oval is a must treat to calm the nerves of the avid sports fan.

Salted peanuts on the right and honey-roasted peanuts on the left...yes please!

Salted roasted unshelled peanuts are a healthy nutritious snack for all ages. Honey roasted peanuts can be smelled long before the nutsman is even seen!

The nutsman is endowed with the freshest roasted peanuts along with a serious throwing arm. How else will he get the nuts to his customers located in the nose-bleed section of the stands??

The infamous Jumbo the nuts man at the Queen’s Park Oval during a cricket match. He declares to a reported for the Trinidad Newsday, "I love cricket, I think cricket is the onliest sport in the world. I don't know why they say soccer is the best sport. "Cricket is a gentleman's game."

Not only does the nutsman have to be patriotic at these games, he must also be highly skilled to throw to his customers anywhere in the stands. But you must be quick enough to either duck or catch! Bowled him!

Three bags full! Nuts being shared into brown paper bags by Jumbo the nutsman at the Oval. He has been a stalwart at the Oval for the last 45 years.

Ok so maybe this one is literally a street food….or rather an “on de road” food. Apart from the field, nuts are sold along streets and roads where passing pedestrians and drivers alike can signal the nutsman to purchase a brown paper bag or two of nuts. The nuts aren’t shelled and they are never over-done. 

A customer waits patiently for his nuts from a vendor at his cart on Frederick Street, Port of Spain

Pale brown, crunchy and salty. Drive with one hand, shell nuts with the other! It’s a little snack to tide you over until you get to your destination.

How many taxis and maxis have I been in where the driver must continue to drive his passengers without missing a stop? A little brown bag of nuts on the dashboard is how.

Then there’s the nutsman who sells between lanes on the open road. He benefits from traffic and perpetuates it at the same time. Doesn’t he deserve to make a living too?

But these nuts are different from the peanuts sold commercially in the Planters tin, or in the Sunshine Snacks or Holiday Foods packets. They taste different, they look different…larger, sweeter, whole peanuts in a brown paper bag. Maybe having to shell them, to work hard to get to the little crunchy nugget makes it taste better?