Black walnuts worth the work for treasured ‘nut meat’
The wonderful and wise late syndicated newspaper advice columnist Ann Landers, real name Eppie Lederer, has a special connection to black walnuts.
One of the first times I crossed paths with Eppie, which was to interview her about the release of her latest book in 1996, she told me about the now infamous black walnut tree included in the first advice column she ever penned.
As a candidate to step-in for the original Ann Landers, a nurse named Ruth Crowley who died suddenly in 1955, leaving the Chicago Sun-Times frantic to find a replacement, editor Larry Fanning took a chance on Eppie, and gave a few reader letters to answer to test her style and writing ability.
Eppie recounted the story behind the walnut column in a 1990 interview with writer Norma Libman for an interview in The Chicago Tribune, which had became her flagship newspaper in March 1987 after 31 years appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“I went home and started to work on the letters. The first one was from a woman who had a walnut tree that was very close to her neighbor’s property,” Eppie recalled.
“Most of the walnuts were falling on the neighbor’s lawn, and the neighbor was gathering them and taking them into her house. They’d had some unpleasant words, and the woman who owned the tree wrote to find out who really owned the walnuts.”
Eppie continued: “I knew this was a legal question, and I began to wonder how high up in legal circles I could go for the answer to impress the contest judges. The choice was, of course, the United States Supreme Court. So I picked up the phone and called my old friend, Justice William O. Douglas. I asked him the question about the walnut tree, and he said he’d have a clerk look it up and get back to me in 15 minutes. The answer was fascinating. The woman on whose lawn the walnuts were falling could eat them, could cook with them or give them to friends, but she could not sell them. I asked Justice Douglas if I could use his name as my authority, and he said, ‘If it will help, go ahead’.”
During the quiet fall mornings at our family farm, in the past two months while leaving from work, I’ve been easily startled when hearing the loud “BAM” produced by stray walnuts dropping from the towering walnut tree and landing on the tin roof of the chicken coop. For years, my dad — as well as my Auntie Lilly and Grandma and Grandpa Potempa — have patiently harvested the rich, milky and delicious nut meats nestled inside the hard walnut shells, which are also encased in a tough green husk which has a staining “inky” interior. We traditionally dry our walnuts on large screens, in the feed room of the chicken coop, while always fending off hungry squirrels and raccoons.
My mom loves black walnut meat for her homemade holiday fudge recipe, as featured in my original “From the Farm” cookbook published in 2004. My new cookbook “Back From the Farm: Family Recipes and Memories of Lifetime” (2019 Pediment Press $34.95) includes photos and stories about Ann Landers, our walnut tree and many recipes with black walnuts as a key ingredient, from banana bread and cookies to cakes and other baked good specialties.
Black walnuts have an added distinction this time of year. According to historians, walnuts joined apples, corn and squash among the foods served on the menu at the first Thanksgiving dinner shared by the Pilgrims and the Native Americans.
Last weekend, I brought some of our homemade crabapple jelly to our neighboring friends and blueberry farmers Cliff and Wanda Bonnell. I was surprised to find the couple hard at work on a Sunday afternoon shelling black walnuts. Wanda said she uses her car to drive over the walnuts in her driveway to remove the tough hulls. She then uses a pair of special wire cutter “snips” to carefully cut away the sections of dried shell to harvest precious and very large pieces of the meat.
“My mother showed which certain trees on our wooded property produce the best and largest walnut meat,” Wanda said.
“I use onion sacks to hang up the walnuts to dry them and we keep the squirrels away the best we can. Last year, we harvested 155 pounds of walnut meat to sell for holiday baking.”
Cliff and Wanda sell the black walnut meat for $10 a pound. It is available by calling them at (574) 8962266.
Wanda shared an easy and scrumptious black walnut cake recipe she said she was given to her by a customer in the late 1970s when she worked as a bank teller at what was once American State Bank in our tiny town of North Judson.
Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. Mail questions to: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, IN 46374.