More cheerful tidings from abroad. Friends visiting south-western France happened on an Hachette guidebook promising information on xcursions, regional produce, discoveries and the art of living! Turning to "local produce", among the delights that struck them were walnuts and strawberries. The walnut, a Roman symbol of marriage, grows throughout France, but is commercially exploited only in the Dordogne. Each part of the walnut tree (noyer) contributes to the peasant economy. The young leaves make "vin de noyer", whatever that is; the green nuts become "creme de noix" or "eau de vie de noix". The ripe nuts can be eaten either wet (fresh) or dried, as a dessert or with a green salad, or pounded to a paste with garlic for a piquant "aillade Toulousaine". It can be made into cholesterol-free walnut oil. Ten kilos of nuts produce only one litre.
But you're not finished there - the discarded shells are ground to a powder which is used to line bread ovens and, according to Jeanne Strang in the excellent Garlic and Goosegrease, to sound-proof aeroplane cabins and also as an abrasive agent in oil drilling in the Middle East. As to the strawberries, of the 600 varieties cultivated in France, the most sought after is the "mara de bois", the wood strawberry. It has all the flavour of the alpine strawberry, but is larger, fragile and difficult to transport. It is usually found in southwest France in Spring and early summer.
Our friends were lucky enough to find some on a market stall at the end of August. On returning to their gite a gift awaited them - a large box of last year's walnuts, dried surplus from a tree in their host's garden.