I’d never heard of butternut, but the more I looked at your photos, the more I remembered my own experiences with the black walnut — Juglans nigra. Yep: they’re cousins, both in the walnut family. The butternut also is known as the white walnut.

The thing about the black walnut is that you had to get the husk off first. Hammers were good. And then there was that interminable process of picking out the meat. We did it only around the holidays, and Mom made the very best ice box cookies with them. I still have the recipe she used, clipped from the Des Moines register: Mrs. Stovall’s Ice Box Cookies.

A few years ago, black walnut ice cream started showing up down here. Then, I found a source for already shelled nut meats. I sent a couple of pounds of them to my aunt in Kansas City as a Christmas gift, and finally ‘fessed up. No, I hadn’t picked them myself. I bought them. “Smart girl,” she said. “I always hated that job.”

Love this story 🙂

We have the black walnuts all over my area. The critters love them, especially the squirrels. I don’t mind them, though some neighbors hate the mess it leaves on their sidewalk.
I have an incredible memory, which is a blessing and a curse.

huh.. i never knew they were butternuts. 🙂

Every morning of summer vacation, my sister and I would wake up to a list a mile long on the kitchen table. We would wait until the last hour before our parents arrival from work to start our chores. My mother thought this list would keep us busy and out of trouble,ha! Our most hated chore was weeding the garden, well we disliked anything to do with the garden.
My picking of walnuts was purely for my pleasure. Had I been made to do them for the baking I wouldn’t have been as eager when they started falling to the ground.

I bet this blog post takes most of us back to a chore we had to do as a child. We had black walnuts and yep, I remember all too well how difficult it seemed to get the ‘goodie’ (as my mama called the nut meat) out. But the most painful memory I have of them is whenever some bratty boys pelted my friends and I with those nuts still in their hard outer shells! Ouch, did they ever hurt when you were hit with one! But I had to laugh at your hubby finding the butternut in your cup holder – sounds exactly like something I would do and something my husband would say, all for the blog! 😀

We had black walnuts! I was the youngest of three kids … and boy would we get in trouble when we threw them at each other leaving those nasty stains on clothes! It was the stains … not the throwing that got us in trouble. 😉

Randy needs to read this story. He likes to collect nuts, stash them in the cupboard with the promise that he will crack them open. But then he doesn’t. I recently tossed uncracked nuts he gathered in a Wisconsin park one year ago.

You’re right about anything possibly becoming a blog post. But I did wonder where you were going with this one.

And the moral of this story is: “Working with nuts can be agonizing..”

I love this post and makes me think of certain parts of my childhood. Now, they are agony as I stumble on my morning walk or run in the dark of the morning, they litter the sidewalk and threaten a twisted ankle! :-/

We have black walnuts all over the Tiny Ten! I am trying to think of something that triggers a memory for me.. lots of good smells of various foods cooking trigger good memories of my childhood 😀

I’m triggered all the time but not memories that I look on fondly.

Did your siblings nickname you squirrel? Well, my Mom convinced me to trick or treat for 3 years as a Virginia Slims cigarette and every time I see white long johns I’m somewhat traumatized. And a red stocking camp sends me under the bed. My mother was good – very,very good. Warmth was her halloween priority.

For me it was choke cherries. I hated them with a passion. First we had to pick them in the sand hills on very hot days with many mosquitoes to keep us company. Then we washed them and picked out the twigs and leaves that fell into the pail. Then, this is what I hated most, I had to put them through a sieve with a wooden mallet to squeeze out the juice and leave the pits behind. I would get blisters on my hands doing this and my hands would be stained a deep purple. Of course I enjoyed the wonderful jam mom made out of those miserable berries!

I am now feeling so sorry about my four kids having such terrible parents that made them do such terrible work. I hated when I was young that I had to go out in the hot sun and pull weeds or even worse, take off the bugs that were eating our garden plants. I would pick them off and put them in a can of of oil which would kill them. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun?

Well, down south here we have our pecans! From now through November/December, pecans start falling…..like any other fruit, there are several varieties. Unfortunately, my Mom would always get the “native” pecans; supposedly they had the most flavor. Native pecans are about 1″ oval round…some a bit bigger while many other varieties are 2-1/2″ oval and larger. Anyways, Dad would crack and then my brother and I would have to use those picks to pick the bits of meat out of the cracked shell. (I too remember stabbing my fingers while trying to pick out the meat, plus the cuts from the cracked shells!) Then after what seemed like endless hours of picking, Mom would use the “pickings” to make a pecan pie! Now, most growers will crack and blow your pecans when you purchase them….yes, only way to go!! We’ve always got our memories; good, bad and all in between!

cleaning tack. ugh. the worst farm job in my opinion. The smell of wet leather can trigger this in me — but it’s the smell of the tack oil/polish that is the worst. I would have rather mucked the stalls. I gotta go rock in the corner now….

My mother’s shortbread cookies in the freezer! She would bake her shortbread ahead of Christmas & put them in the freezer. I used to sneak down & steal a cookie or 2 all the way up to Christmas. She never accused me, but I think she knew.