Wednesday the 27th

Hi:



I spent two hours yesterday cracking walnuts. My dad gave me a big bag of uncracked walnuts.



I have not cracked walnuts since I was 20 years old, the year before I got married. Throughout the higher grade school years and all throughout high school once a year, just after Thanksgiving, my mother would give my brother Ken and me a big bag of walnuts and a big empty peanut butter jar. Our job, with no choice to accept it or not, we would have to crack walnuts until the peanut butter jar was full. It took all evening in front of the TV.



Once I got married I no longer had to crack walnuts. Instead, my mother would bring us, just after Thanksgiving, two big jars of cracked walnuts. One jar was pieces of cracked walnuts. The other jar was perfect halves of walnuts. While cracking walnuts for two hours yesterday I got no perfect halves of walnuts. My ex-wife used the walnuts for her fruitcake. Everyone she gave the fruitcake to each year loved it (but not me...fruitcake is on my popcorn list).



My mother is no longer with us so no more cracked walnuts unless I crack them myself.



I use my walnuts in my cranberry pie. The cracked walnuts I will hide here as they are only for cooking not eating right out of the jar. Too much effort goes into cracking these little buggers.



Before I got this bag of uncracked walnuts I bought cracked walnuts at Safeway and Winco. I have not decided if buying them or cracking them is the easier way of getting them.



Tonight I will continue cracking my walnuts.



The picture is the panda that Washington Zoo had to send back to China. This picture when the panda was quite young.





Steven