Black walnuts. Even the name shrouds itself in darkness. I love them.
My family doesn’t. They think I’m a bit crazy, and they claim the walnuts don’t taste good. I think they’re wrong. All the more for me.
I love the kind of walnuts we’re more familiar with, too – English, or Persian walnuts. Living in the Yukon, there is no such thing as having a walnut tree in my backyard.
One October, I was visiting my sister in Ontario, where we both grew up. She has moved to Grimsby, in the Niagara region. Grapes and peaches grow there. I was so excited when we saw a sign for someone selling walnuts from their own backyard.
From Grimsby I went to our old hometown of Peterborough, Ontario. I visited some old friends, vegetarians. I brought some of these local walnuts with me, thinking they would be delighted too.
Their younger son, at the time around 18 and an avid artist and horticulturalist, was not so impressed. He introduced me to black walnuts.
Black walnuts are indigenous to North America. Growing up there, I had no idea that they were edible. They fall from the trees like heavy tennis balls, clad in a similar colour of green. But as they age and bruise, get run over by cars and so on, the darkness inside them stains sidewalks, roads and driveways.
The following October I was in Peterborough again. I saw black walnuts on the road. I picked them up. As chance would have it, I had time to process them during the partial solar eclipse. I shucked them of their green husks, and kept the husks in ziplock bags. I scrubbed the nuts and let them dry.
I had heard that they would stain my hands but I didn’t pay attention. In later research, I have learned that the husks can irritate your skin badly. It’s better to wear gloves.
But I am not sorry that, for the first processing, I let them stain my hands. It didn’t do me any harm. I washed my hands, and at first the foam was pink. All through the day my hands darkened, as the sky had during the eclipse. My fingernails were particularly stained, and long after my hands had faded back to their usual colour, a crescent that looked like the crescent of sun created during the eclipse brought me back to the time I spent cleaning them.
The husks I brought home to my friend Cheryl McLean, who wanted to use them to dye fish skins. As a dye, black walnut does not require that you use mordant first. We dyed skins dark brown with the boiled husks, and added some iron to another dye bath to create a rich black. You can make ink with the husks as well, dye wool, and so on.
This past Thanksgiving, a friend in Grimsby brought me quite a load of black walnuts from her neighbour’s lawn. The neighbour was glad to get rid of them. There’s a compound in the husks that discourages the growth of other plants. But receiving wild food as a gift – well, that’s an obligation to look after it. I’ve learned at least that much from my contact with Indigenous culture here in the Yukon.
This time I wore gloves and worked in my sister’s backyard by the fire. My sister watched me, surprised by how long it took. “I would never do that,” she said, as she sipped one of the espresso martinis my niece was mixing. Working on the walnuts helped me drink fewer of those martinis, which was a health benefit in itself. Going home, it was as if a squirrel had helped pack my suitcase, all those little nuts nestled in among my clothes.
Even after the nuts are cleaned and have dried for about six weeks, merely eating them remains a project. The shells are much more robust than the walnuts you’re probably used to. At first, I used a lonely sock from the lonely sock pile, and a hammer, on a scrap piece of wood. It’s possible that my family found the sock association off-putting.
Now I use a vice. It would probably be easier if it were bolted down to something. My partner likes to call it a “kitchen vice.” I wear glasses normally, but it might not be a bad idea to wear goggles against the flying shards of hardwood released in the breaking of the nuts.
It takes me about eight minutes to break the walnut, eat what I can reach, then break the other pieces to access the rest of the nut. I like to pair these walnuts with a crispy apple or a cup of tea. I read that black walnuts are a great source of antioxidants and polyunsaturated fatty acids, as well as protein.
I think they’re delicious. And after a modest number of nuts, I’m satisfied with the process and move on.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am also addicted to chocolate. This is the season for Quality Street, and don’t even get me started on Purdy’s. But when I get a tin of Quality Street chocolates – and I do – I notice that I don’t feel that great after indulging my desires. The sugar leaves me feeling a bit off, and then there are all those plastic wrappers in lovely colours, which I should probably find some way to reuse, but which wind up in the garbage.
My final moment of satisfaction with black walnuts comes when I put the shells into my wood stove. We don’t get to burn much hardwood up here in the Yukon. Those shells pack a lot of btu’s, which I can use. Zero waste packaging. A pleasure in itself.
I wish more treats were as satisfying as black walnuts. They take time. But I think it’s a sign of our culture that in places where many people are going hungry, such high-quality fat and protein lies in the street, disregarded as a nuisance. Is time spent processing food something to see as a cost, or as a pleasure in itself?
I know, I took an airplane. But I was going to visit my family anyway. As I said in the first article, these are the musings of a mediocre environmentalist.
Do you have any stories like this? Send them to me at materialreculturing@yahoo.com and I’ll do my best to weave them into a column.
