Black Walnuts

I am rather fond of nuts. Nuts are plentiful in grocery stores this time of year and we have had a good supply to snack on here at home. I especially enjoy nuts that are in the shell rather than those in jars or bags. There is a fun element to cracking nuts and then eating them.

Of the common nuts found in grocery stores in the shell, I like filberts, brazil nuts, and almonds the best. Peanuts are good. Then there are walnuts and pecans.

There are different varieties of some nuts. Walnuts are the main subject of this blog posting. The ones you find in the grocery stores are California English Walnuts. These are popular because they are plentiful, tasty and have an easily cracked shell.

They are not as good as black walnuts. I have never seen black walnuts in the shell in any store. I have seen small bags of shelled black walnuts on occasion.

My father liked black walnuts. When I was a kid, on at least two occasions, we drove out to Rock Falls, Illinois where we knew of some black walnut trees. After the first frost, the walnuts would start falling from these trees and that was the time to pick them up. However, they were not ready to crack or eat. The black walnut shell is about the same size as a typical store walnut but when you pick them up off the ground, they would normally still have their husk on them. Black walnut husks are about the size of a small peach and the juice that is in them will stain just about anything it touches. After the nuts fall from the tree, we would use our shoes to roll them on the ground and that would remove the husk leaving the nut exposed.

Black walnut shells are very hard and a typical nut cracker will not work. We used a hammer to crack them. We'd end up with a large box of de-husked black walnuts which was stored out in the garage. My father had a piece of flagstone that he setup on a shelf in the garage and it was out there that the hammer would be used to crack and shell the nuts.

Invariably, some of the nut meat would be left inside the remains of the shells. These we threw out in the yard for the squirrels. You could hear them trying to crack the remains up in the trees.

The edible part of the black walnut looks a lot like a typical walnut but the taste is quite different and unique. Maybe I'll see if I can find some.