A few years back a friend from Kentucky gave me some black walnuts from his folks’ farm. I was immediately addicted. I helped him gather some in Ottawa last year, but wanted my own supply. Our little village should have some walnut trees, I reasoned, but had no success locating them, because I was looking for a HUGE tree, like the massive one in an old part of Ottawa we saw last year.
I was driving down our main street late September when I had to brake to avoid a squirrel carrying one of these in its mouth:
I screeched to a halt and looked up. Wow! A beautiful tree, full of green husks. I got out and picked up one the squirrel had missed, or was going to come back for. (Sorry, guy).
Once back home, I peeled it and got my first lesson in walnut foraging. The peels smell like iodine, and stain like iodine; the fact is, it is iodine. They are used to make dyes in some parts of the world. Stained hands or not, iodine is safe, the body will only absorb so much.The black walnut also has very potent medicinal uses, especially for men. Walnuts are shaped like prostate glands, need I say more?
Being a polite Pontiacer, I waited until I saw the owner of the house and asked permission before I started collecting in earnest. The owner confirmed it was a walnut tree, and I found two more just up the street and asked them also. They brought out a ladder for me to climb to shake the branches for the plentiful bounty.
The above trees are only about twenty years old, and held more walnuts than I could use.
To get rid of the husk is very messy in the green state, given the iodine stains.. I was determined to dry them in the shed. The problem was it got damp for quite a while, and the husks started to mold and rot, and tiny little worms appeared on some of them. Ick! The shot above shows a semi-dried walnut, but it was still slimy inside and I stained my fingers just splitting it open a bit. Anyway, not wanting rot, I brought in my 200-300 walnuts inside and dried them in the stove room, getting rid of any slimy ones first. When the husks are dried, they peel with one small hammer blow and don’t stain so much.
Next I cured them out of the husk for about 10 days in the stove room. They then look like this:
Ready to shell and eat; I roast them a bit on the stove, and some of them crack open of their own accord. I hammer the rest. Getting the meat out from the five separate compartments is fiddly, but well worth the effort. Wire snips do it best. I love the roasted and sweet, slightly medicinal taste.
It is November the first today, and I took this shot of the lawn in front of the walnut house:
Lots left for the squirrel...and he won’t get infections from cuts or scrapes, I'll wager.
We used to pick up fallen black walnuts before they got too "inky" and laid them in the gravel driveway where we would drive over them for a couple weeks. Eventually, you could pick up perfectly clean nuts to take inside and crack. I've spent many hours teasing the meat out of black walnuts! Nice write-up, brings back memories. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteYes,I drove over a few that fell on the street and they popped nicely.I may try that next year. Thxs.
DeletePaul
I completely forgot to come back and comment on this. Black walnuts grow wild in Oklahoma and were plentiful at the trailer park. We piled them in milk crates and left them outside. Once the husk blackened, it wasn't too hard to roll them underfoot to get most of it off. I agree they are very hard to pick out after cracking the shell. There was once a company here in Oklahoma that would shell them with special ancient equipment, but they went out of business and the machines left the state.
ReplyDeleteI can't get over how long it took me to clue in to foraging for nuts. I love roasting them on the wood stove before I crack them... P.
DeleteIf the stain from the husks is from iodine alone and not other colorants in combination, you can disappear the discoloration from skin and from hard surfaces with vitamin C. Just dissolve a ground-up C tablet (about 500 mg, tho more doesn't hurt) in water, then apply to the stain, which will vanish. It will also work, though not quite so effectively, on iodine-stained fabrics, but does best on stains that are still wet, not dried and set in.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that info,about the clothes especially. I did find that rubbing alcohol worked on the skin, and time. Next year I'll wait until they are completely dry before taking the husks off.
DeletePaul
Paul: also FWIW, especially if you swim in a chlorinated pool and have problems with skin or hair due to chlorine build-up, a Vitamin C spray (a combination of ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate, water and a small amount of baking soda to bring the PH up a bit toward neutral, works very well to clear the chlorine from skin and hair. Just spray on, let it sit a minute, then shower off.
DeleteThanks for that last bit. A bit spooky though, I go swimming once a week in a heavily chlorinated pool, and when I get some up my nose...I don't suppose I could snort that stuff though?
DeleteWhat is your background with all this? I am intrigued, your knowledge seems to come from personal experience.
You can reply to pguttadauria@gmail.com if you like.
Paul
Trusting that I'm not imposing too much on our hostess, I have thyroid issues and found that topical iodine application (Lugol's solution, to be precise) is helpful but unless you're really low on iodine it doesn't absorb completely and therefore leaves some stain on the skin. The Vitamin C converts the iodine part of the solution to iodide, in the process disappearing the coloration. Chlorine is in the same chemical family as iodine, and the Vitamin C solution affects the chlorinating agent in pool water such that the molecules which bond strongly to hair and skin are caused to release and rinse out. There is a commercial C preparation called SwimSpray which has an informative website; I like the product a lot, and it's stabilized for long life (the homemade version I described seems to degrade in a week or so) but it IS significantly more expensive and so I often rely on the homemade version since I swim two or three times a week. The effect on my skin and hair was not good before I found out about the C rinse.
DeletePS: SwimSpray is, per my pH test strips, pretty close to neutral, but I don't know how the supersensitive mucus membranes in the nose would respond to it ... still less the homemade version, since I can't get it that close to neutral without messing with its effects. Don't know that I'd try it myself, just sayin'.
DeleteOk..Thanks. I use a homemade saline for nasal discomfort, I just don't like to over-use it.
DeletePaul