Grabbing Nuts

Last year, for the first time, I made a batch of nocino, a liqueur made from unripe walnuts. I'm not exactly convinced that last year's batch was all that great (I think I used too many cloves), but my mom liked the stuff. This year, I'm going to make another batch, with fewer cloves and perhaps more vanilla, maybe a couple of coffee beans.

Anyway, today I stopped by the job early so I could gather some of the black walnuts from the two large walnut trees onsite. When I got to work, I shocked my co-worker by telling him, "I'm here to grab some nuts." Poor guy was the only other person present, so I think he was sweating a bit until I explained that I'd be harvesting some walnuts to make a liqueur. He was less perturbed when I returned with two bags of walnuts and asked, "Can you smell my nuts from where you're sitting?" Unripe walnut fruits have a pretty strong, almost citrusy, aroma.

I adapted my first batch of nocino from this recipe, but this time I think I'll halve the clove content and add a couple of coffee beans to the mix. Last year's experiment wasn't a complete success, but a promising start. The limoncello, in contrast, has always been a huge success, right from the start, and I have two gallons of the stuff just waiting to be bottled.