Nuts are shelled by soaking in water (salt water, probably) for 24 hours, then the nuts are boiled for 5 minutes. The boiling softens the shell, and makes cracking (by hand or machine) much easier. Nuts that are to be sold as blanched or sliced nuts, may be boiled again, before blanching and/or slicing.
A parsec is an astronomical unit of measurement that is equivalent to 3.26 light years distance, or the distance photons will travel in vacuum over the period of 3.26 years.
To parse is to analyze something in an orderly way. In linguistics, to parse is to divide words and phrases into different parts in order to understand relationships and meaning. For example, English students are sometimes asked to parse a sentence by dividing it into subject and predicate, and then into dependent phrases, modifiers, and so forth.