If you have a walnut tree in your yard or near where you live you are one lucky person. Not all trees deliver great crops without a little bit of care, but many do. I harvested a giant crop of nuts from the tree in my backyard for years — until I moved. I don’t think it was ever sprayed, which means the 50 pounds-plus of nuts that I gathered were organic!

Watch as your walnuts grow green globes throughout the summer and into fall. Sometime in October — before Halloween — you will notice a few dropping. Also look to see if some of the green hulls are partly open. If so, it’s time to harvest. You will need a long stick of some sort so that you can literally knock the (mostly still green) nuts out of the tree. A tarp under the tree is a great idea to help with gathering. Don’t worry if you break some branches and knock out some leaves. No problem.

Now, before you gather up those nuts, get yourself a pair of thick gloves. The green hulls on the nuts will stain your hands black for days. Once you’ve gathered the nuts, you need to crack all of them out of those green hulls and put them in a single layer in the sun (cover when it’s raining) so that they can dry out. Try a nut from time to time to test for dryness. At first, they’re rubbery and bitter. They turn toasty and sweet through drying.

Note that if your tree drops nuts that are wrapped in black, people will tell you that the nuts inside are bad. Not necessarily so. Open them and see. You might be surprised.

Once your nuts are dry, you’ll want to crack and store them in the freezer asap. The best way to crack them is to use a hammer (with a block of wood under) and hit them on the top. If you hit just right, you’ll get perfect walnut halves. Crack through 10 or 20, pick through them and move on. This is an excellent thing to do while watching TV. Note that the shells will fly around the room a bit so there is some cleanup.

Hope this helps. More questions? Fire away.

As it turns out, we’re all still here. Still chewing. Still enjoying great food. Today I was turning over the whole concept of blogs. What’s more important, the print product or the blog. You can’t eat either, so which? A blog can deliver information quick. Print is richer, more appealing, more enjoyable in so many ways. When it comes to food, what’s your opinion? Weigh in. Would love to know.

Your chance to take a flavor-lesson from Chef Tre Wilcox, a two-time James Beard nominee and a popular contestant on Bravo’s “Top Chef,” is this Saturday, when the celeb-chef comes to Oakland to teach a class.

The class, sponsored by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, and made possible by a community grant provided by Kaiser Permanente, will teach people some ways to make great dishes — that are good for your heart (ie: less cholesterol.)

When I talked with Tre, he admitted that cutting back on fat isn’t exactly his passion, but as he tested out some low-fat versions of some of his favorite recipes, he was pretty pleased.

“I would say that olive oil is a great substitution for butter, and you can almost always substitute half and half for cream. You don’t want to cut all the fat when you use dairy or your sauces will tend to curdle.”

Tre says he didn’t mind using lowfat margerine in place of butter, but he doesn’t plan to do that at home.

“The thing is that you don’t go crazy with butter or something like that. If you keep in mind that food should taste like what it is, you won’t have a big problem. When I maked mashed potatoes, I just put a little bit of butter in there. If you put too much, the potatoes taste like butter, not potatoes.”

the trick with celebrating the flavor of each food, he says, is to cook it nice and gentle.

“Even potatoes. When people cook them in fast boiling water, when they drain those potatoes, all that potato flavor goes right down the drain.”

Tre, who is mindful of his diet, says the real key to eating healthy is to start eating as many fresh vegetables as you can. “You want to start kids on fresh veggies when they’re young. Give them a piece of protein and a big pile of veggies at dinner and they’ll be trained for life.”

The 3-hour class is just $5, all of which goes to the American Heart Association. It’s from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave., Oakland.

Personally, I think most breakfast cereals are ridiculously overpriced — but at least Cheerios is giving back this month. Instead of some goofy prize that ends up in the garbage, the company is tucking little kid books into their boxes.

The books are small, but they are bonafide books, packed with lots of fun illustrations. There’s a book about electing a duck for president, and a Dora the Explorer tale. The book giveaway – called Spoonfuls of Stories — includes six titles and some 5 million books all told.  The campaign is the seventh annual, and is done in partnership with First Book, a nonprofit children’s literacy group.

If you have kids or grandkids who might enjoy a new storybook, grab a box of the cereal quick because the campaign already started.

It’s not headline news, but it makes me smile when I come upon a mainstream product that shows the big guys are actually “getting it.” This week, the smile was prompted by Crisco’s new Puritan Canola Oil with Omega-3. The omegas come from algae, which means it’s a great option for vegetarians — fish is another big source. 

Crisco is such a massive company with competitive prices that it could easily ignore the call for better, healthier oils. Instead, the company is on the move, tweaking its products and basically giving mainstream eaters access to better food. This new oil is about $3.99 for 16 ounces.

In case you don’t know, this is walnut season here in California. The squirrels know, trust me. The house across the street — which happens to be my former residence and is owned by my parents — has a GIGANTIC walnut tree in the backyard. Huge. It is loaded with walnuts nearly every year.

When I lived there, I’d harvest the walnuts, taking great care to make sure every last one was properly dried, then cracked, then placed in the freezer before it was mixed into exactly the right cookie, crust, muffin or granola. Love those walnuts. Fresh are the best.

This year, however, the squirrels are the benefactors of said walnuts. If that isn’t bad enough, the puffy-cheeked little things apparently enjoy tormenting me with their abundance. Just yesterday, a squirrel literally ran across the road, jumped up MY tree, skittered across MY garage roof and into MY backyard to bury a walnut. Glad he has walnuts. Little scamp.

I understand loving the suburban wildlife, but I protest. I think that if the occupants of the walnut-tree-house don’t wish to harvest the crop, they ought invite a fellow human in to take over. Could those little squirrels possibly need THE ENTIRE CROP?

If you happen to have a walnut tree in your yard and don’t know how to harvest them, email me and I’ll give you the details. If you don’t, just know that fresh picked, hulled and dried walnuts are an incredible treat that every eater of nuts should know about! The next time you see a squirell, wish IT a happy walnut season!

Since I love Togo’s and love even more a terrific bargain, I made my way to Togo’s last week for the roast beef with avocado sandwich. Two bucks of yum! I made the mistake of saying yes to their yellow mustard, which I won’t do THIS WEDNESDAY when they’re serving up turkey with avocado!!!!

If there’s a Togo’s near you, get yourself there for the $2-deal. Not sure if the tips go to the Juvenile Diabetes folks or not, but either way, remember to drop a little extra in the box. Togo’s deserves to raise lots of cash for this cause — and it gets HUGE kudos for delivering the bargain in spite of Wall Street’s antics. They could have backed out of the deal, but they didn’t. That’s moxy.

FYI: After this Wednesday’s turkey and avocado, the next week is MY week. Hot pastrami! I’ve been eating this sandwich for years… way before I had wrinkles. OOOps. Too much info. According to our informant there will be two avocado-turkey weeks, two pastrami weeks!!

Togo’s on Wednesday. Be there. And make a donation.

It was a pear-fect week here at our house. Literally. Besides the vat of Pear liqueur I made up for Christmas gifts (shhhh! don’t tell the family) we discovered an utterly delicious salad combo that we can’t stop eating. Spinach with pears and goat cheese. This salad is not just good. It’s can-I-eat-it-every-night good.

You don’t need a recipe for this; Just put more spinach than you think you want into a large bowl. Add just as much red onion as you want — remember that the rock-hard red onions are sweetest. Top that with a thinly sliced pear. Toss and serve with a few slices fresh goat cheese — I use Laurel Chenel. Feta would be lovely too, but the fresh goat cheese is irresistable.

I’m not sure it pairs perfectly with any wine, but I’d try a middle-of-the-road white. Apologies about the no-photo. I just couldn’t stop myself from eating all of it every time I made it. Maybe next time.

It was a big package — a box big enough to fit a basketball for sure. And the return address promised chocolate. I had waited for this package for three days. The publicist called me twice to announce it’s arrival.

Happy that the package had finally arrived at its destination, I carefully opened it with a sharp knife. I reached inside and pulled out a large wad of paper. Beyond that was a big bubble of impervious plastic that could only be opened with a knife.

Inside that was a cool pack and a 1-by-3-inch box of chocolate. Inside that were three 3/4-inch-square chocolates. I’m not going to dis the chocolate itself, but the packaging? Talk about overkill. And overhype. If I want a second opinion on these I’m going to have to get a clean knife. Good thing I didn’t have a large audience for this grand package-opening!

Say there, is that Republican stew? Are you sipping a Democrat martini? Since not all food and drink is new and different, you need to know that the hard-working publicists out there are working overtime in the creativity department, working the upcoming election for any and all possible publicity angles.

A pair of flavored vodkas arrived this week with recipes to go with. One vodka is blue, the other red. Can you guess which goes to which party? The raspberry UV Blue is used to mix up democrat drinks. The UV Cherry is used to mix up republican drinks. I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but I have to ask, who did the flavor picking here? Cherry for the Republicans? That, I say, is a little like pulling the short straw.

Just fyi: The UV Blue does taste a bit like raspberries; the UV Cherry like a maraschino cherry. Both do make for rather patriotic colored drinks.

Vodka aside, the reason I had to post this today is a button I got in the mail from Hahn, a Monterey County winery that makes both Hahn and Smith & Hock wines. These savvy folk chose not to limit their profits by choosing sides. Instead, their poster and button read: Vote for Hahn: A Wine for All Parties.

Now that’s more like it! Stay tuned. I’ll try to find a copy of their poster to share.