The Black Walnut project 12

So on Sunday last, my boys and I went on an unexpected adventure. It started with an afternoon, and ended in a months long project that just began. But before that, as with most great Sundays with my boys, we had breakfast.

Jack

Coffee

Coffee

Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of TED talks about Food. Jamie Oliver’s 2006 TED wish, to make children more aware of the foods that they eat, was a great and memorable one, in particular. During the talk, there is a segment where he brings out various fruits, and the children are not able to name them properly. This is not fun or funny, it’s scary. They call potatoes tomatoes, and so on. This scared me, that my boys were perhaps not learning enough about food and its effect on their lives, and I decided that I’d find a way to teach them, while maybe learning something myself in the process. I had no idea what form this might take, but it was a kernel of an idea. Get it? Here’s the segment he included in his talk, from his show called Food Revolution.

With the last ten weeks, I’ve grown to love some new foods. This time around, I’ve fallen in love with nuts. Walnuts, in particular, are a superfood, with great and essential fats, and have a crackin’ fun ritual attached to them. (Fun fact: They are about 26 calories each per shelled nut.) But I was making a mess. Every time I worked carefully to get two perfect halves of an English walnut out of its shell, I ended up breaking it into a disappointing pile of broken pieces. I decided to do some research and see how a walnut cracking professional might do it, so that I might get that elusive, beautiful, brain-like nut free in one or two pieces. I found this video on Black Walnut harvesting, which coincidentally showed the best, most swift technique I found of someone cleanly opening a walnut, with, of all things, what appears to be a 2×4.

It was in this video I realized that even my beautiful, brown English walnuts, that I thought of as a whole, unprocessed food, was highly processed to remove a lime green shell of flesh. I realized that I had probably walked over hundreds of walnuts in groves in my life, and had no idea what I was walking upon. I realized that I was the kid in the Jamie Oliver video too.

So, back to Sunday. After breakfast, we went and donated some old clothes that don’t fit anymore to the local Goodwill store, and took a stroll around the house goods section, as we like to do. I picked up a beautiful stainless teapot that looks like it holds a gallon of water for $3.99. Then off to the farmer’s market to see all the fresh local fruits and veg, and to say hi to the former mayor of the town. Then, back to the house for some movies and lunch and hugs and rest in the cool air. I took a pic or two of David wearing my glasses, and he decided he wanted to take some pics of me, and so there was this.

John at 250

John at 250

David wearing daddy’s glasses

So after that we all decided to take a long walk to the local park for some soccer and other fun. When we got there, lo and behold, there were walnuts in their flesh, littering the ground. I delighted at the synchronicity of this: I had just learned what a walnut really looked like, and found about $10 worth of them sitting on the ground about a mile from my house. It occurred to me that this was a great way to teach the boys about food, and now it’s a project. In the fall, I’m going to come and gather the ripe walnuts and learn about the harvesting, shelling, and drying processes, and teach my boys about it at the same time. These are the commercially scant American Black Walnuts, which have a harder shell to crack than the common English walnut, but they are supposedly a tasty treat.

Jack and David start the Black Walnut project

Jack and David start the Black Walnut project

Jack and David start the Black Walnut project

Jack and David start the Black Walnut project

I got really excited when we found the walnuts and the boys got excited too. It’s infectious that way. I found a brick and started opening the walnuts, and found a few things: bugs using them as homes, soft shells and very wet, floppy walnuts. The things you buy in the store have been thoroughly prepared for you to eat: make no mistake.

So I gathered a bunch of them, we opened a few to investigate, and the rest I’m holding on to in order to learn about the harvesting so that I can get a better yield in the fall. Note that I may very well be breaking the law by taking the walnuts out of the park, but since I pay for it with my taxes, and they’d just be chopped up by mowers and trashed, I don;t think anyone will mind. I’ll find out for sure.

Finally, we took a little ride to dinner, and after the long walk and lots of learning and experimentation, the boys were really tired, and had a nice nap on the way to dinner.

Jack and David take a nap

Can’t wait for the fall to continue to study the life cycle of these delicious treats. Here’s the whole record of our day.

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