It’s filbert season here in the Willamette valley, and i am just pleased as punch about it! What’s a filbert, you say? Otherwise known as hazelnuts (ah, that’s a name you recognize), filberts are small nuts hidden inside fuzzy/stabby packages that are pretty much delicious anyway you crack ‘em. I was sad to leave the wonderland of pecans back in Texas, but can console myself with handfuls of hazelnuts and wheelbarrows full of walnuts.
I picked up a 5 pound back of filberts from a local farm this Wednesday at the farmer’s market. They used a nifty contraption to crack them in bulk, which mostly worked. I sorted a little over half of them to get 2 cups of shelled nuts for a batch of delicious spiced nuts (seriously: click over because you NEED that recipe) and put the rest in the fridge. I think i’ll try a batch of apple/nut bread this weekend. A friend of ours is hosting an apple pressing party this weekend, so we’ll come home with a bushel of apples for eating/drying/baking, i still have a package of local cranberries from last year in the freezer and a blogger posted this tasty looking Autumn Harvest bread recipe at this week’s Eat, Make, Grow blog hop that i’m hankering to try. It’s fate, i tell ya! I’ll be sure and post the recipe i come up with soon.
Do nuts grow locally in your neck of the woods? What do you like to do with them?
What does a filbert need in order to bear nuts (and are there non-bearing varieties). When the maple tree out front died, the city offered us a variety of different trees, and I was very excited when one of them was a filbert. But 7 years on, the tree is 30 (?) feet tall with no sign of nuts. Does it need a girl or something?
Well, Xan i actually have no idea!
though the folks across the street from the house we’re trying to buy have a filbert tree, and i haven’t seen any nuts on it. so perhaps they do need a mate. something to google.
I love hazelnuts/filberts. Happy to have nuts near by – pecans.
oh, forgot to say – your spiced nuts look W O N E R F U L!
I love hazelnuts! Thanks for the link to that blog hop. Looks like lots of other interesting posts over there.
You bet! It’s a fun hop. We’re just getting going, but already some really great posts and blogs.
Oh man, these look GREAT!
thanks! Though, i think they were better with pecans. also, i didn’t use all the flavor dust so they’re not as sweet as i’d like.