2024-10-25
The goodness of Walnuts
I wrote about foraging for walnuts a couple weeks ago and in the time since I've really come to enjoy this new daily ritual and have improved the process. What I've learned since that first post is that it's better to collect a bunch at one time and remove them from their outer husks all at once because they need to dry for a few days before using. I give them six to seven rinses in the 5 gallon bucket I collected them in to remove most of the husk residue. Then I set them out to dry in a wheel barrow in full sun for 6 to 7 days. A few days longer wouldn't hurt. Then they go into a box until I use them. This 6-7 days of drying makes the cracking process much easier and cleaner.
The whole process of collecting the nuts from the ground, removing them from the husks, rinsing and managing took maybe an hour for each bucket I collected. I collected 2 buckets, each containing about 3 gallons of nuts, about 200 nuts total. That's about 1/3 cup of walnuts for my breakfast oatmeal for 30 days or so.
Baked pumpkin oatmeal topped with chopped walnuts!
For the next step of cracking them out of the shell, I'm using a simple bench vise, which is far more efficient and cleaner than the hammer I used the first couple of times. The vise lets me get a single split down the middle of the nut. I do 8 or so nuts each day, which results in about 1/3 cup of nuts for the next day's breakfast. Using the vise for the first and subsequent splits means I'm getting much larger, whole pieces of nut.
There are two things I really love about this process. First, it gives me about an hour a day to just sit on the porch and complete a relaxing, simple task, a task that humans have done for all our time on earth: processing nuts harvested from a tree. It's such a simple pleasure to appreciate and partake of a nature provided resource that will help keep me alive for the next couple of months.
Second is the eating and enjoying! 1/4 cup of walnuts provides 180 calories which is on par with a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter. Walnuts are an excellent, healthy and concentrated energy that I made no effort to grow. Nature provided and all I had to do was take the time to harvest, transport and process.
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