The story of Argan Oil

After coming out of the mountains, we stopped at an Argan Oil Cooperative, which is the business of women.  The argan trees are only found in Morocco - short, spiny knotted trees in which it's not uncommon to see goats - yes, in the trees!  😊  The goats eat the outer fleshy part of the argan fruit, the inner hard kernel passing through their digestive system.  The women gather the droppings and crack the kernels open to expose the nuts which is then crushed to extract the expensive oil.  The extraction of the oil is done with an ancient-looking mortar and pestle apparatus.  The left-over paste is used as an amazing moisturizing soap in the hammams.  Argan Oil is sweet and rich, used in many local dishes, salads, and for dunking bread.  It's expensive, because it takes the nuts from 30 trees to make just one liter of oil!  Often the oil is adulterated with other oils and sold as Argan Oil, so one is warned to buy from a reputable source.  

A lovely young Moroccan woman supervised the co-op and described the process of extracting the oil.  Pictures follow:

Notice that they're using stones to crack 

the kernels against a large rock.