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Paul MacDonald mentioned seeing an exceptional crop of
beechnuts lately. I haven't had the leisure to be out looking
myself, but some years ago I noticed how particularly abundant they
were, and it got me wondering about their human use. In some of the
books I have read about the "edible wild", beechnuts are praised for
their flavour and usefullness, and it's reported that they were once
widely collected. I certainly tried eating them as a child. I
remember reading an older book about life in Nova Scotia in which the
author (Will R. Bird? Helen Creighton? Clara Dennis?) reported seeing
children selling boxes of them by the side of the road, like blueberries.
That fall (1998, I think) I gathered some beechnuts, from a
tree where they grew on branches very low to the ground. This made
it easy to collect a bunch. I brought them indoors, where in the
warmth and dryness most of the nuts parted quickly from the prickly
outer husk. I made a point of observing how much time it took to
process them. I found, for example, that for one cup of beechnuts in
the husk, it took only a few minutes to separate out the
triangular-shelled nuts, which then amounted to a quarter of a
cup. Following the advice in Turner & Szczawinski's series on the
Edible Wild Plants of Canada (National Museum of Natural Sciences,
late 1970's) I roasted them at a low temperature in the oven for
about an hour. Then I shelled the nuts. This took far longer than
the first stage, and was fiddly work. I found the best instrument to
crack the tough shell was my garlic press, which allowed me to split
open the shell without crushing the nutmeat. I noted that it took me
twenty-five minutes to crack a quarter cup of nuts. Something
productive to do if doing something else that doesn't require your
full attention, like watching TV, but otherwise pretty
labour-intensive. Then I had to rub the nuts in my hands to remove
traces of the covering membrane, which is bitter. A quarter-cup of
nuts in the shell yielded two heaping tablespoons of beechnuts. Most
were full round little kernels (not triangular), and larger than a
peppercorn but smaller than a pea. (About ten percent of the shells
were empty duds.) The nuts have a high oil content, and roasted have
a delicious aroma and flavour, which my family all agreed was more
like cashews than anything else, but subtly different. Really
good. Addictive, even.
But what a lot of work to get enough to make, say, a batch
of brownies! I really don't see how anyone in the past could have
harvested and processed beechnuts for regular use. It must have been
one of those tasks assigned to children ...
Incidentally, the nuts don't taste anything like those
sugary, crunchy little kernels in beechnut ice-cream. Did the
ice-cream ever contain real nuts?
Patricia L. Chalmers
Halifax
At 09:02 AM 19/09/2013, you wrote:
>Hi All
>Tuesday I got to spend the day paddling with a friend.
>Just local spots - nothing exciting as to location.
>The water was high in the rivers and fast - easy to go down
>stream but not so up. So we spent most of our time in Stillwaters.
>At one point we came upon a beech tree. It was growing in a bank
>by the water and the other trees had crowded it out over the water.
>Wasn't a majestic beech maybe 15 cms in the stump but was loaded
>with beechnuts. Every spur on ever branch had one. They are not just
>ripe yet so we didn't get to taste them. A long time since I saw a
>tree so loaded.
>They taste good when ripe but a little tedious to shell.
>Canada Holly bushes were well covered with berries also. The robins will
>have a good feast latter on. The berries are sort of pink yet but
>will soon get red.
>Another spot of maybe 10 meters was a clone of cranberries. The
>vines were just
>hanging with berries out over the water. Not 100% ripe either.
>We saw some birds - a flock of 5 Wood Ducks in a lily pad bay. They
>flew a little but not far.
>A Spotted Sandpiper was rocking back and forth on a log.
>We stayed out til after the sun went down and just as we were
>getting the canoe put away,
>a Horned Owl came by. It circled between the woods on the shore and
>maybe 10 m out over
>the lake - done that half dozen times. Just as well for the
>sandpiper to keep hidden.
>The owl didn't catch anything that we saw but there was a lot of
>dragon flies and other flies
>on the lake so maybe that was supper. A nice end to a great day -
>Enjoy the last few days of summer
>Paul
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<font size=3D3>Paul MacDonald mentioned seeing an exceptional crop of
beechnuts lately. I haven't had the leisure to be out looking
myself, but some years ago I noticed how particularly abundant they were,
and it got me wondering about their human use. In some of the books
I have read about the "edible wild", beechnuts are praised for
their flavour and usefullness, and it's reported that they were once
widely collected. I certainly tried eating them as a child. I
remember reading an older book about life in Nova Scotia in which the
author (Will R. Bird? Helen Creighton? Clara Dennis?) reported seeing
children selling boxes of them by the side of the road, like
blueberries.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>That fall
(1998, I think) I gathered some beechnuts, from a tree where they grew on
branches very low to the ground. This made it easy to collect a
bunch. I brought them indoors, where in the warmth and dryness most
of the nuts parted quickly from the prickly outer husk. I made a point of
observing how much time it took to process them. I found, for
example, that for one cup of beechnuts in the husk, it took only a few
minutes to separate out the triangular-shelled nuts, which then amounted
to a quarter of a cup. Following the advice in Turner &
Szczawinski's series on the Edible Wild Plants of Canada (National Museum
of Natural Sciences, late 1970's) I roasted them at a low
temperature in the oven for about an hour. Then I shelled the
nuts. This took far longer than the first stage, and was fiddly
work. I found the best instrument to crack the tough shell was my
garlic press, which allowed me to split open the shell without crushing
the nutmeat. I noted