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Southern Oregon Journal: Walnuts conjure great memories Sunday Dec 4, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Peggy Dover for the Mail Tribune You have to love a neighbor who shows up on the doorstep, just as the holiday season commences, lugging a bulging bag of nuts. Fresh walnuts, to be precise. Though there was no "Ho, Ho, Ho," forthcoming as he deposited his sack, Ken was every bit as good as Santa at that moment. Ken is the neighbor who phones me when the vultures touch down in my evergreen each spring. One simply cannot over-appreciate neighbors like Ken and Barb. Having an avalanche of walnuts delivered fresh off the tree next door practically makes me giddy with privilege. Walnuts conjure great memories of my dad sitting in the living room with a pie pan for the shells, watching football or Johnny Carson and cracking away in anticipation of Mom’s holiday baking. We grew them on our small acreage in Ridgefield, Washington, as did our grandparents. So, walnuts and filberts (hazlenuts) showed up in all things baked. To this day, when I get a sniff of walnut husk, the green outer layer, I’m there on the farm, or wishing I were. I can’t cruise through the holiday season without sharing my love for baking. Sugar plum visions danced their way into my head before the last bite-sized Butterfinger from Halloween lost its wrapper (three bags and four treaters). I limbered up my digits with coconut cream and pecan pies for Thanksgiving. The cranberry, chocolate chunk cookies I made for my leaf-blowing buddies are long gone, and the decks are cleared once again for bowls and measuring spoons, cinnamon and cranberries — everything for Christmas goodies, most including walnuts. I’ve grown weary of paying out big cash for rancid, worn-out, tumbled-from-one-place-to-another walnuts. Fresh, local crops not only taste better, they are super healthful and loaded with good omega-3 fats. Research shows (don’t you love that generic term?) that walnuts can decrease the enhanced vulnerability to oxidative stress that occurs in aging. Translated, that means fewer senior moments, which is a kind term for brain farts. They even resemble mini brains. Walnuts have an unusually beneficial form of Vitamin E, are great in helping to guard against some cancers, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. Some phytonutrients are found virtually only in walnuts. At the risk of sounding like a health column, I will add that a recommendation of one ounce of nuts per day equals about seven shelled walnuts. So now, forward to baking something in the form of recompense to Ken and Barb, my benefactors. Maybe a walnut cake topped with a treat my grandma, Goby, never failed to provide this time of year — candied walnuts — so easy to make and all too easy to munch down. As with all nuts, they do carry a fat punch, but it’s a healthy fat, sort of like a dry heat is better, so is a good fat. And it is the season to be jolly. Favorite recipes including walnuts gladly accepted in lieu of pricier gifts. — Peggy Dover is a freelance writer living in Eagle Point. Email her at [email protected].