"Tastes Like Wald Hick'ry Nuts"

Come a certain week in autumn it's World War One around here with "Bang! Bang!" on the cabin roof and people jumping out of their skins, but it's hickory nuts raining down from the shagbark tree. Can't help but think of Euell Gibbons, a famous wild-foods expert who late in life did commercials for Post Grape-Nuts cereal and, in his Texas accent, bawled the immortal lines, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible," and "Tastes like wald hick'ry nuts." He'd be proud that I finally tasted wild hickory nuts from my own tree. They tasted not at all like Grape-Nuts. Furthermore, Gibbons did not die, as was rumored, of stomach cancer but from a ruptured aorta.

Two autumns ago in a trance of delight that lasted two weeks I gathered in a basket several pounds of hickory nuts such as you see here, most from the shagbark just outside but also from hickories in the woods, where I found nuts walnut-sized and walnut-shaped -- every tree's fruit sculptured a little differently. Left them to dry in a basket until Christmastime when they agreed to be cracked -- a little. It took hammers and dental tools to get the tiny, brain-shaped meats out, spraying shards of shell all over and me stepping on them, and about 3 pounds through the pile I gave up and tossed the other nuts out the door for the varmints. In winter now, my favorite wild food is the chives that grow in snow.

Sweet and Fatty

Discoveries about the creamy pleated sweet-tasting acorn-sized wild hickory nuts that I have gathered 10 pounds of, the best harvest yet. Each day in the beautiful last hour of daylight, now rare and precious, I comb the lawn and woods and bring home the kernels. Each day the hickory trees and nuts teach me something.

Outdoors:

1. If the thick-walled, blackish-green pod won't release the ivory-colored kernel, it's not good to eat anyway.
2. If moisture seeps in, the kernel gets moldy and so does the nut inside. So if the kernel is sprinkled with mold spots, it's not good.
3. If it has just rained and the kernels are only very recently and mildly wet, place them in the oven to dry for 12 minutes at 350 degrees. That will toast them, split the kernels slightly, and scent your whole house.
4. If the nut is spherical it's from a shagbark hickory tree. If it is ovoid it's a pignut hickory. If it resembles a walnut, it's a black hickory.  If it's got a green tight-fitting sheath that won't peel off, that's a bitternut hickory and that one is not edible.
5. Do not leave your basket of hickory nuts outside, because in the morning your trove will be depleted.

Indoors:

1. Place harvested hickory kernels in a cool place. Warmth will make them rancid. I keep 'em outside on the porch.
2. Air-dry the kernels for one week. This dries the shell and it's more likely to come off. I do this on a screen.
3. Before shelling, bring the kernels to room temperature. Chilly nuts are far harder to smash and shell.

Toasted

Shelling:

1. Place four to ten room-temperature kernels in a plastic zip-lock bag. Airborne shrapnel is therefore contained. Zip the bag 99 percent shut.
2. Smash each kernel with rubber mallet. Using a hammer will pulverize them, so a rubber kitchen mallet is the preferred tool.
3. Open the bag, reach in, grab and save the largest nut pieces.
4. When the largest pieces are out of the bag, take out the smashed shells and use a dental tool to pick out the remaining meat. You decide how much picking you want to do. Then empty the bag of shell fragments and start over.
5. Get in a rhythm and you can extract maybe three ounces of nutmeats per hour.
6. Nobody wants shells in their hickory nuts so be careful that what you're keeping is nutmeats only.
7. Keep one bag that you are positive is only large choice nutmeats without a shred of hard kernel, and give this bag to a good friend.
8. Dumping the shelled nutmeats in water to separate them from any hard shell pieces does not work, at least for me.
9. Microwaving does not help the kernels open. Two minutes of microwaving reduces the nice sweet fatty nutmeat to bitter charcoal.

Storage:

1. Keep hickory nutmeats refrigerated or frozen in their own small plastic bag or clean glass jar with a lid. And eat them. Great in oatmeal, cookies, muffins, stuffing, on ice cream, or just to savor.