80,000lbs of Walnuts Purloined In Northern California 127
Penurious Penguin writes "While not quite as epic or bitter as losing 600 barrels of maple syrup — in two separate heists, 80,000lbs of walnuts have been stolen in Northern California since last week. The heist was discovered after the walnuts failed to reach their destinations in Miami, FL and Dallas, TX. If you happen to see a large man (approximately 6' 2") driving a white semi-trailer and munching on $300,000 worth of walnuts, it may be the villain. Officers with highly trained squirrels have yet to be posted at interstate weigh-stations."
Sounds silly but an increasing problem (Score:5, Informative)
The theft of bulk food commodities is becoming more and more of a problem with commodity prices climbing. Even in more traditional areas like grains such as wheat. Most farms, if they don't sell or ship off the combine store their grain in bins or silos sometimes for months, and sell it and ship it slowly. Right now I am looking out my window at a row of shiny bins that hold a crop worth between $100k and $200k per bin depending on how much is in the bin (worth that to me; worth ten times that to the company that I grew under contract for). We actually put padlocks on the bottoms of our more expensive crop bins. Won't keep out a very determined thief, but it will hopefully provide a bit of a pause.
Recently a trucker told me he was hauling out of a remote bin for a farmer. Because it was quite hassle to put the auger in the bin to unload, once he was set up he just left it set up, and would come about twice a day for loads. During that time someone came along with a truck and helped themselves to a load. The bin was about 15 tonnes short; exactly one small truck load. So after that he started taking the belts with him, and disabling the auger's engine. Not a lot of money was lost (this was wheat after all... only between $3k and $4k), but not a happy thing for the trucker who had to make up the difference.
So yes, theft happens in bulk, and it can be a lot of money. Sounds funny, or nutty, but still a serious concern.
Re:Paulie Walnuts (Score:5, Informative)
How do I know this, you ask? That is because, I have deciphered the nefarious plans of this master-villain!
He is making a lifetime-supply of maple glazed walnuts!!!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/maple-glazed-walnuts-recipe/index.html [foodnetwork.com]
Recipe's third ingredient exposes dastardly plan (Score:5, Informative)
If it had involved eight large tankers of oil (one each of lime, cassia oil, lemon oil, nutmeg oil, coriander oil, neroli oil, and lavendar oil, plus 3 tankers of food grade gum arabic , then there plans would be obvious:
They're planning on making industrial quantities of Open Cola [wikipedia.org], and they know all of the ingredients of the GPL'ed recipe for open cola from [wikipedia.org] OpenCola. Next they'll be stealing a large tanker of vinegar and a large truck with calcium-carbonate in order to create the vast quantities of fizzy water to reconstitute with the syrup.
Re:I smell onions? (Score:4, Informative)
Nerds could care less about a truckload of nuts.
So they do care, then?
Re:Sounds silly but an increasing problem (Score:2, Informative)
easy, you just add it to a larger, legit wheat load that you were about to sell anyway