Friday, November 6, 2020

Black Walnuts

 Early interesting Cars:

Pensylvania car filled with over 200 walnuts by squirrels. One nutty car!

 
Yeah, but Mr Peanut has his own car:

First: Thanks from my wife to you all for the Birthday wishes. WE did smile BIG with Susie's statement, "Shoes? Isn't that how it started!"

For today:

I am a nutty guy.  I enjoy peanuts, almonds and cashews. Actually any nut I guess.  We have several walnut trees in Belmont. This year I picked up about 3 gallons of walnuts in the hulls. If you don’t know black walnuts, they are on the tree in a green hull. The hull a little bigger than a fist. The nut falls and over time the green turns to a nasty mushy black under a thin shell. The actual black walnut is a little over an inch in diameter in a HARD shell.

This is what I have left to crack and pick.

You can lay them out and drive over them with a car, you will NEVER crush the walnut, but separate the actual nut from its hull. I tried something I had never tried. I added water to fill a 5 gal bucket and used my drill and a device for stirring paint to stir, beat and jostle the nuts until the hull was separated from the nuts. It took a couple times, it is nasty and you must have gloves or you will learn the color of walnut stain. But when I finished the nuts were cleaned.

I allowed them to dry in the sun here in Florida and then tried different ways to shell the goodies out. The hammer with nut on a solid surface works, but you can hit a finger! OUCH! So far the vise has been the best. Cracking Black walnuts is hard. You feel like you won the lottery if you get a piece the size of your finger tip.

My first step, the vice.

The first squeeze and crack, then I carefully hold it in place  open the vise and ttun it 90 degrees and tighten the vise again. Below is the second crack.

After the second crack you can pick or do some vice cracking on smaller pieces, I usually do about 6 more cracks on small sections. I have gotten several 1/4 sections of goodie, but not many.


                                Our haul so far

Sherry & I remember the old drug store's ‘Chocolate Nut Sundaes.’ Vanilla Ice cream, a big helping of black walnuts in maple syrup with Chocolate syrup drizzled over the mix.  So now we have had two of those, mmmm delicious.  The English walnut just does not substitute for the black walnut.

It appears that when I am thru cracking and picking the nuts we will have a ‘sandwich size’ zip lock back full.  Not much considering it was a little more than 3 gallons of the original nuts.

 

Nite Shipslog

PS: I do hold my hand around the nut as I squeeze. Some of these crack like a rifle. A walnut is hard!!!!

6 comments:

I'm mostly known as 'MA' said...

Wow what a lot of work to go though for a nut. I'd say you really have to love them to do all that. I like the kind I can buy in a bog already cracked. My mom loved them too and would do all that work to get some. Then she'd make a delicious nut cake with them.

Mevely317 said...

I remember, our first year here in Alabama seeing those green things everywhere. Oh, but I learned my lesson when trying to open one with my fingers -- and all I got for my trouble was permanently stained fingers. Or so I thought. Despite scrubbing vigorously with every solvent we had at the ready, I had to wait about 6 weeks for it to fade on its own.

That's a brilliant idea to use the vise!

Glenda said...

Oh my, I remember the deliciousness of black walnuts along with the work involved to enjoy those tidbits! Never thought of a vise for cracking them, what a great idea! Have a wonderful weekend, love from Chobee.

Chatty Crone said...

I am a nutty person, but not that kind of a nut. Especially walnuts. And man that looks like a lot of work - but I enjoyed seeing how much you love them.

betty said...

Hard work for little yield, but I do enjoy walnuts!! Now I want a sundae with nuts on top of it!

betty

Susie said...

I am glad we never had any nut trees around our yard...we crazy kids would have knocked out teeth out trying to eat them...cause we used to eat green apples ...poor kids get hungry. LOL. Some people got a lot of patience...that ain't me boy. But I agree, black walnuts have a totally different taste than the English walnuts. May not take as many for the flavor. Glad Sherry enjoyed her birthday wishes. Blessings to you both. xoxo, Susie