Slightly Off Center

I'm kind of a sucker for free food. I pick wild blackberries. I gather windfall apples and pears from the Lutheran church next door's neglected trees. I literally picked up ripe plums off the sidewalk, biking home from the post office the other day. Back in grad school, I mapped out all the English walnut trees between home and the studio, and in fall would come home with pockets bulging with nuts.

Had a flashback to those days on Sunday. Denise and I had an hour to kill between church and a potluck, and River Road Parks & Rec was sponsoring their semi-annual plastics recycle, so we went to drop off several bags of yogurt tubs and medicine bottles. Denise was navigating, and took us up Northwest Expressway, not my usual route. While negotiating the difference between the Park and North Park exits (which are nowhere near Park Street, downtown near Saturday Market), I noticed crows landing on the shoulder of the road. I registered a scattering of something on the pavement, and the leaves of an overhanging tree.

I think those were walnuts, I said to Denise. Should we go back and check? So we wound our way back around to the Park intersection, pulled over on the shoulder, turned on the hazards, and I filled one of our newly emptied plastic recycle bags with nuts.

Walnuts are fairly easy to open when they're fresh. Lever your pocket knife blade into the seam at the stem end, pop the shell apart, harvest the meats. A pair of slip-jaw pliers makes a good nutcracker, for stubborn cases. And because the nutmeats are still soft, they don't shatter if you crunch down too hard.

Once they were all shelled, I dried them in a 275° oven on a sheet pan for about half an hour, stirring every ten minutes or so.


I ended up with two bowls of nuts, about a pound and a half in all. I feel like making fudge, or brownies. Maybe a potica.