Low-Carb Black Walnut Pie

Although I have mentioned black walnuts before (more than once), I'm not sure I've ever commented on the flavor.  It's good and quite unlike English walnuts, which are more commonly available commercially.  Black walnuts are strong and it's probably accurate to call it an acquired taste.  My first exposure wasn't very positive, but I have grown to like them a lot.

Black walnut pie is a great way to eat them, and I have a few other recipes that use black wanuts, too.  The basic recipe is something like this:

1 cup sugar (white, brown, or a mix)
1 cup corn syrup or sorghum
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 c nuts (all black or can mix 50/50 black/English)
1/8 tsp salt

Mix, pour into a pie shell, bake 10 minutes at 400, then at 350 for another 40 minutes.

That's pretty high in carbs, mostly because of the sweeteners.  Here's an alternate (I developed it for someone who's diabetic):

3/4 cup brown sugar Whey Low (aka Whey Low Gold)
1/2 cup Whey Low Type D
1/4 cup butter (4 tbsp)
3 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup nuts
1/8 tsp salt

Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

For the shell (rolled or swaged):

1 cup whole wheat flour (could also use rye)
1/4 cup oil, butter, or lard
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup water (if rolling crust out; otherwise not needed)

I don't know what the carb content per slice is.  For the crust, the total net carbs are 76 grams (72 grams with rye); this is less than 10 grams per slice. The black walnuts have about 4 net grams of carbs per cup.  The Whey Low adds some carbs.  The carb impact is substantially lower than with sugar. The Type D is somewhat lower than the regular granulated Whey Low according to this analysis on the Whey Low site.  One cup of sugar has about 200 grams of carbs; 1.25 cups would have 250 grams--meaning the per-slice carbs from the sugar would be 31.25 grams (if sugar was used).  If the Whey Low impact is overall 18% of that, it would be pretty low per slice.

As noted previously, 100% whole wheat does not hold together well when rolling out a crust.  One solution is to add some white flour, but that a little to the carb content (88 grams per cup for white versus 76 for whole wheat).  Another approach is to swage the crust.  Swaging is probably not the best term, but basically it's just a process of dumping the flour mixed with the fat and other ingredients into the plate as clumpy powder, then forming it to the bottom and sides.  Maybe cold sintering would be a better term.  At any rate, it works, albeit at the cost of making a fairly friable and fragile crust.

So that's what I did.  I used sunflower oil and mixed it well, then formed the crust to the plate.  After that, I mixed the filling ingredients, adding the nuts last, and dumped them into the pie shell.

While this does not make for an award winning crust, it works decently well.  I put the pie in the oven and the result looked pretty typical for a black walnut pie, albeit somewhat compressed (the volume of sweeteners was somewhat lower than normal, so as it cooled it compressed a bit--still, it was decent and didn't look at all bad--the picture below is fresh out of the oven).

 

The flavor was fine.  Since I didn't bake a more-traditional pie at the same time, I couldn't do a side-by-side comparison but it was very tasty and not recognizably different.  My friend's blood glucose readings after eating a slice were comparable to what he sees otherwise, meaning it didn't cause a spike.

Nut pies have better low-carb potential because the main ingredient of the filling is essentially carb-free, unlike fruit pies.  It may be worth investigating if \dessert options that have a lower carb load are desirable.

Irma Walnuts

I think about 1/3 of my black walnut crop was knocked down during Irma.  A friend who has several black walnut trees had a similar loss rate.  I figured they wouldn't be ripe yet, but decided to process a few just to check.  As mentioned previously, I hammer off the husks, wash them to get them as clean as reasonably possible, then crack them.  These early nuts had no husk fly larvae in them; there either won't be any this year or the eggs haven't hatched yet (it's possible the cycle is temporarily broken at my place; last summer the whole crop dropped prematurely because of the drought--no husks, no new generation).

The husks from the first few have been extremely hard to remove.  It might be because they aren't quite ripe.  Hopefully later it will be better.  Pretty much everyone says you should let the nuts dry for a while after husking, but this time I cracked them within a couple of days because I wanted to see how good they were.

I used my Master Nut Cracker (also available from 855sheller and maybe a few other places) to do the cracking.  It went pretty well this time. 

The nuts I cracked were from my good tree--the one that I think is an improved cultivar.  As you can see, it has big nuts and they yield a lot of nutmeat.  The cracker easily breaks them up without damaging the nut meats much, so I can get out big pieces.

 

The container shown has maybe three nuts in it.  I only cracked five total as a test.  I'm going to husk the other early ones at this point and look forward to the normal harvest when they start dropping in another couple of weeks.

Irma

Irma was a tropical storm at most by the time it hit northeast GA.  Wind gusts generally in the 50s were the max as far as I know, with a particularly heavy band of wind and rain that moved through generally from about 3:00 pm - 7:00 pm on September 11.  Power outages were severe on the east and northeast side of the city and in the applicable suburbs.

I saw a lot of big trees down.  This area has a lot of oaks of different varieties, and many of them went down.  Pines fell, as well, but that's not a surprise.  The tree above--a chinkapin oak--was one of the larger ones I saw.  In terms of size, the trunk diameter was almost 36 inches where the knots are just below the branches.  That part of the trunk was about 5 feet off the ground when it was standing.

Another area where I saw a number of oaks blown down was a south-facing slope.  The winds were out of the east-northeast, so the wind force would've been generally pushing the trees in a downhill direction.  That seems like a bad mix of position and force, and the end result validates that (though it is also possible that the particular location was hit with wind forces that exceeded those elsewhere).

It's always sad when big trees fall--but given the force that the storm had farther south and the track it took versus what was predicted, it could've been worse.

Persimmons

In grocery stores in the fall, you can sometimes find Asian persimmons.  I've seen them at warehouse clubs, too.  Typically, those are Fuyu persimmons, though there are other varieties.  They're big, sweet, and crunchy.  There's nothing wrong with them, and they can be grown in much of the US, too.

The native variety is similar but different.  It's from the same genus, Diospyros, but it is a different species, virginiana vs. kaki (for the Asian).  American persimmons are small and astringent until ripe; most sites seem to suggest harvesting dropped fruit from the ground rather than trying to pick from the tree.  Persimmons look ripe before they actually are; I tried one years ago  when it was orange, firm, and on the tree.  It did not go well.

American persimmons also typically ripen in late fall.  The unripe one mentioned above was pulled off a tree in November one year.

I do not have any bearing native persimmons, although I have planted a few grafted cultivars.  I do have a friend who has two trees standing side-by-side, male and female (that's convenient).  I was surprised to see persimmons starting to drop early this month.  They looked soft and not firm, so I decided to try one.  It was fine.  The picture above shows some that I picked up the first day.

Since then, they have continued to fall, and are mostly okay.  In my rookie harvesting season, I've concluded that for now, any that have firm spots are probably at least a little astringent.  I haven't had to spit any out, but some have definitely had a bit of residual after-effect.  On the other hand, ones that are turning black or blue are (unsurprisingly) past their prime.

The ground is getting littered with rotting and dessicating persimmons, and they are a hit with nectar-loving insects (bees and butterflies).  They're also forage food for a lot of animals.  The Georgia Forestry Commission sells persimmon seedlings; presumably mostly for hunters who are developing food plots.

Jewel Weed and Bleeding Heart

Jewel weed is a native annual that grows throughout the eastern US.  It likes shady areas and blooms in late summer, starting about mid-August.  The plant pictured here is in a bed adjacent to the sidewalk approaching my front door.  The area is always shady, never getting direct sun.  The jewel weed just showed up one year and I encouraged it. However, I did not water it last summer--a bad drought year--which caused it to largely die off before blooming.  Only a few plants came up this year.

It's rumored to be therapeutic for poison ivy and can be applied after exposure, limiting the allergic reaction.  It often grows in the same areas, since poison ivy is also a shade-loving plant.  I don't have any at the other place, however. I've only seen it growing once out in the woods, on a running trail I used to use. I'm hoping to harvest some seed pods this year from my little stand of it in the suburbs.

Bleeding heart is another native that I have never seen in the wild.  However, long ago I planted some in the same area that has the jewel weed.  Bleeding heart is a perennial and comes up very early in the year, going dormant before the jewel weed comes on strong.  They aren't quite as complementary as crocus and later-blooming perennials like hyacinths, but they can share space without too much trouble.

Bleeding heart crowns can be purchased online and (around here) in big-box stores during winter.   They live a long time, but the ones in the picture no longer look so nice; years of drought with limited watering have caused them to decline.  Even without drought stress, they may eventually decline, anyway.  This picture was shot a few years ago in early May when the stand was about 10 years old.  Replanting would probably be called for at this point.  A few volunteers have sprouted over the years from seed.  I have left them where they sprouted, but I could probably have transplanted them to see how they would do.

Although the plant does well in shade, it does seem to be sensitive to crowding.   There was a large bush in the same area; the bleeding hearts closest to it did not thrive.

Eclipse

I've been in a couple of solar eclipses in my life.  Both times I thought that the early phases--partial blockage of the sun--were almost imperceptible.  As the eclipse progressed, it eventually did look noticeably different--I thought then (20 years ago) and more recently (a couple of weeks ago) that it was like looking through heavily-tinted glass.  The sun was still shining, but it was dim.

These pictures capture what I thought I saw.  The darker was was just under-exposed a couple of stops by me because the camera tried to make the picture look like a normal sunny day.  The darker one is a better rendition of what I was seeing as the eclipse percentage moved higher.

Another thing I noticed this time but that I don't remember during the last eclipse (in 1994) is that the sun provided little warmth after a certain point.  Standing in the sun didn't feel hot, even though it was still relatively bright. Also, the interior of the truck, which was in the sun, wasn't hotter than the outside.

I don't have animals and didn't really notice anything different, with one exception:  Once it got very dark, a dusk-singing cicada let loose and started singing.  On a normal day, they only start singing in twilight once it is fairly dark (still during civil twilight, but not immediately after the sun sets).

A Bad Day for a Cicada

Early August is high time for cicadas--numerous species are in the trees singing with abandon every day from early morning until dusk.  Cicadas in distress have a non-melodic buzzing that is very noticeable.  Usually when I hear it, it means a cicada is trying to escape a bird.  Recently, I heard it nearby and low--on the ground.  It turned out the cicada was being stung by a wasp.  The wasp's markings don't match those of the cicada killer.  Someone later suggested that it was a European hornet, and that seems to fit.  The European hornet is an insect feeder, so the cicada still met a very bad end.  Early August is, according to one study, prime time for cicada mortality at the hands of cicada killers (though I don't know if it'd be earlier or later in Georgia vs. West Virginia).  I did know someone who lived in a neighborhood with a lot of them, and they were very apparent in August, flying low over the grass.

It's also prime time for spiders.  There are a few large types in Georgia; one that I'm seeing a lot of right now are argiopes; last year I saw one near where this one was located.  This year there are four, probably descendants of last year's spider.  One has an egg sac in a pretty exposed location.

The day after I shot the one hornet dispatching the cicada, I saw another one robbing the web of one of the spiders.  This is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for the hornet...the spider did not react while this all was going on.  I apologize for the poor focus; it was shot with my phone and with the full sun it was hard to see the screen.  I also didn't want to get all that close.

Obviously, there's a nest somewhere nearby.