We're used to walnuts on the grass and having them in a bowl for Christmas visitors, but this year the tree's gone absolutely berserk. Maybe the new tree-climbing cats have frightened the squirrels away but we have more walnuts than enough.
Anyone any ideas on what to do with them ? Rude and insensitive answers will be studiously ignored.
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Shell them and dip them in melted dark chocolate and serve them at Christmas as hand made chocolate walnuts, or if you are feeling frugal use them as Christmas presents...
or
Chop some into your morning muesli
or
bake them into a cake
or
mix them into vanilla ice cream
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You can always send me some. I eat a handful every day.
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Oh, perhaps this is well known but I think it was my grandfather ( he died when I was 8 so I can't be certain ) who taught me how to open walnuts neatly. They tend to splinter if you use nutcrackers.
His technique which I still use to this day is to hold the nut in the heels of your clasped hands, the seam of the nut in the same plane as your fingers. Simply gradually increase pressure on the nut until it gives a little crack and you will be able to pull the two halves apart with ease without splintering the shell. The shell halves can then have matchsticks glued into them as masts and little cardboard Viking style sails attached and then blown around your bath with a straw to have battles, really good when you have plenty of bubbles because they can then sail off into the mist...( actually I don't do that sailing bit anymore..very often... )
:-)
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....oh and if you put a drop of lighter fuel in the shell when sailing it and light it you can do little Viking funerals sailing off into the mist in the bath too, as long as you make sure it's not a plastic bath and the water is deep enough to ensure that your longboat doesn't founder...
:-)
Last edited by: Humph D'bout on Fri 29 Oct 10 at 19:39
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Horn Blows
Doooooooo Doooooooo Dooo
Dooooo dooooo di dooooooodidoooooooodidoooooooooo
Tony Curtis hurls a hawk at Kirk Douglas's eye...
Fabo
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Suppose you could make a reasonably convincing hawk from a brazil nut shell...bit of glue...
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>> Suppose you could make a reasonably convincing hawk from a brazil nut shell...bit of glue...
tape some sycamore leaves to it, matches for legs
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...bit of hazlenut shell would make a good beak. Claws are a bit of a puzzle though. I'll give that some thought.
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And make sure that it doesn't get anywhere near your "Lighthouse" when the flame is alight!
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It's ok PP, any impending lighthouse disasters can be averted by judicious impromptu tsunamis created by rythmic flexing of the feet.
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>> It's ok PP, any impending lighthouse disasters can be averted by judicious impromptu tsunamis created
>> by rythmic flexing of the feet.
you need to take great care to avoid undersea explosions of volcanic gasses.
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>>you need to take great care to avoid undersea explosions of volcanic gasses.
Methane and a naked flame............;>)
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I would crush them, gently roast them and seal them in jars for use in cooking and sweets.
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>> I would crush them, gently roast them and seal them in jars for use in
>> cooking and sweets.
>>
Who? Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas?
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NO you dumbskull, the Hawks.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 29 Oct 10 at 20:59
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Won't the beaks be a bit crunchy?
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Yes, but it beats albatross.
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... but not stormy petrel on a stick, surely?
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Yes it does but not Larks' tongues, Wrens' livers, Chaffinch brains, Jaguars' earlobes., Wolf nipple chips specially while they are hot, but I cant stand Dromedary pretzels or Tuscany fried bats.
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Thank you for your thoughtful suggestions. I think Mrs H might like a chocolate-covered Tony Curtis and leave me to the matchsticks and pickle ...
BTW has anyone ever trained cats to harvest walnuts ?
Or something.
Note to self; remind me not to let no. 1 son mix me a rum and coke to celebrate his pay rise and his car passing the MoT. Hopefully I won't be skating across the yard on a slick of power steering fluid any more.
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If you are ankle deep, is it worth bagging them (walnuts) and taking them to a local market stall?
Last edited by: AnotherJohnH on Fri 29 Oct 10 at 21:29
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I'm confused now, I thought we were only making one hawk ? Nobody mentioned a need for multiple hawks. As an aside an unopened brazil nut would make a good Mare of Steel though. Struggling a bit to think of something you could make a Kirk Douglas out of now, it'd have to have a dimple in it. Solved the claw problem by the way, you'd just have to splay and fray the ends of the matches. The big golden bell, now that's a challenge. It would have to look authentic but not be so heavy as to sink the towed walnut shell...I'm thinking the shade from a yellow Christmas tree bulb but it sort of goes against the nut theme really. Bit of a worry that.
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Which are the walnuts ? I'm not a nut man. Are they the ones that look like brains when you get them out ?
I think the shells would make good coracles rather than longboats. Perhaps one could re-enact a proper naval battle, but with a Welsh touch to it. The Battle of the Heligoland Bight or perhaps the Coral Sea .
A Pacific island can be realistically made from a sponge, dotted with dead stems of ice plants, sprayed with glue and dipped in teleprinter chads, then sprayed green. ( just another of my model rail skills ! )
My brain hurts now.
Ted
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Midway re-enacted with walnut shells?
You would need to glue a few together to make an Akagi class carrier.
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.....and the Akagis would have to be made sinkable !
Ted
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>> Midway re-enacted with walnut shells?
Naah - with the huge supply of nuts, one could re-enact trafalgar in the bathtub.
judicious use of 'er-indoor's hairdryer, a peashooter, and some zippo fluid, and you could do far better than that PC Red v Blue celebration they had a few years back.
Kismet.
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>> Naah - with the huge supply of nuts, one could re-enact trafalgar in the bathtub.
>> judicious use of 'er-indoor's hairdryer, a peashooter, and some zippo fluid,
hairdryer, zippo fluid, and a bath?
sounds a dangerous combination to me........
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>> hairdryer, zippo fluid, and a bath?
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>> sounds a dangerous combination to me........
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Ok, we'll transfer the action to the Koi pond, and substitue some bellows for the hair dryer.
All in the interests of historical research, of course.
Guaranteed we'll get a letter from the H&SE, and front page in the Daily Mail.
"Old codgers banned from celebrating Navy's finest hour"
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>> >> hairdryer, zippo fluid, and a bath?
>> >>
>> >> sounds a dangerous combination to me........
>> >>
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>> Ok, we'll transfer the action to the Koi pond, and substitue some bellows for the
>> hair dryer.
Hmmm now there's an idea..
and the Koi could act the part of submarines....
(better make it a WW2 battle though!)
Last edited by: swiss tony on Sat 30 Oct 10 at 15:34
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Ok, so we'll run a Das Boot motif, with some trained kingfishers to eliminate the koi before walnut-convoy PQ 17 is picked off?
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>> Ok, so we'll run a Das Boot motif, with some trained kingfishers to eliminate the
>> koi before walnut-convoy PQ 17 is picked off?
>>
Getting better by the minute this idea!
Tadpoles as frogmen? (sic!)
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Problem:
The dragon flies have gone on strike, and refuse to play the part of Fieseler 156 Storch Long range spotters.
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Storch? Didn't they use Blom un voss floatplanes or FW Kondors?
No problem, we can rope in a few ducks for recon.
(This thread started off nuts, and is now quackers)
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If we're talking Pacific war, the nips are going to be at a disadvantage with the Kamikazis.
We've only got one Zero !
Anyway, I'll just build an Airfix Yamoto and blow your nuts away !
Ted
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Why come and hijack this thread, Ted?
I have no Truk with you.
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Ankle-deep in walnuts - Runfer D'Hills
