Grandma Vera and Baking
Bigelow Pumpkin Spice tea this morning and homemade zucchini pumpkin walnut bread. I made the bread, but with English Walnuts bought from the store. It is a different animal from the home grown walnuts.
Grandma Vera had a walnut tree in the backyard, and the squirrels loved to raid the nuts. She had Jim and the kids bring all the nuts in those green, messy shells up to the house in five gallon buckets. Their hands got brown, like they had soaked them in brown shoe polish.
"When we lived on the farm, Dad just laid them all on the drive, kept rolling the car over them, and then when the shells rotted off, we brought the nuts in."
Now we had to get those green shells off, or wait until they rotted off, to get to the hardest nuts ever.
The wood of the walnut tree is hard, and so is the shell of the nut.
The gathered nuts went into the basement for the winter, and over the next summer, after they aged, they finally got shelled and picked. Those nuts were hard to crack.
We brought them out to the concrete, used a hammer, and pounded each perfectly round, dark brown nut. Then, using a pick, we tried to dig out some meat. It was hard work. The pieces of nuts were carefully scanned to pick out any shell, since they were so hard, they could break a tooth.
Taste as well was totally different from the English Walnut. It had a little bite to it, you might say, it was "green", and not so pasty sweet. It had a wild side. You could tell it came from a tree, and not a store.
Our house on Teakwood had a Black Walnut, too, and every fall we gathered nuts. We collected them to age in the basement, and the next fall I baked with real black walnuts. My breads tasted real and homey. Now I have less work, no shells in the bread, and I miss the taste of the backyard in the bread. Something is missing, and I think back to Grandma Vera. She baked some great holiday treats!
She made homemade fruit cake, rum balls, crescent cookies, pecan balls, chocolate chip cookies. I still have some of those recipes.
I wonder if the people that bought her house know about her Mulberry tree pies, and the Black Walnut tree?
Grandma Vera had a walnut tree in the backyard, and the squirrels loved to raid the nuts. She had Jim and the kids bring all the nuts in those green, messy shells up to the house in five gallon buckets. Their hands got brown, like they had soaked them in brown shoe polish.
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| Walnut leaves, nut and Hull |
"When we lived on the farm, Dad just laid them all on the drive, kept rolling the car over them, and then when the shells rotted off, we brought the nuts in."
Now we had to get those green shells off, or wait until they rotted off, to get to the hardest nuts ever.
The wood of the walnut tree is hard, and so is the shell of the nut.
The gathered nuts went into the basement for the winter, and over the next summer, after they aged, they finally got shelled and picked. Those nuts were hard to crack.
We brought them out to the concrete, used a hammer, and pounded each perfectly round, dark brown nut. Then, using a pick, we tried to dig out some meat. It was hard work. The pieces of nuts were carefully scanned to pick out any shell, since they were so hard, they could break a tooth.
Taste as well was totally different from the English Walnut. It had a little bite to it, you might say, it was "green", and not so pasty sweet. It had a wild side. You could tell it came from a tree, and not a store.
She made homemade fruit cake, rum balls, crescent cookies, pecan balls, chocolate chip cookies. I still have some of those recipes.
I wonder if the people that bought her house know about her Mulberry tree pies, and the Black Walnut tree?
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