Not so nuts for nuts

We’re enjoying an autumnal break in France this week, the weather’s been perfect up to yesterday, sunny skies and mild temperatures. Yesterday all changed to a much cooler feel with a very cold wind blowing down from the north, but the skies are still gloriously bright so there’s no complaining from us.

This time of year one of the joys of being here is collecting the abundance of fallen walnuts that lie all around whilst we’re out on our walks. The region is a big producer of walnuts and there are acres and acres of managed trees as well as those growing along the edges of the lanes, some of which have clearly been abandoned and left to grow wild. Now we understand the rules to be that any produce that lies on the roadside verges can be collected by anyone, but we cannot go into fields or onto private land to pick anything up. As there always hundreds of walnuts lying in the lanes we walk along from the house, our pockets usually end up full by the time we arrive back home from a walk.

All the years we brought Jasmine out here, one of her favourite things to do was to help us collect up the walnuts and try to crack them in her jaws and help herself to the nuts inside if didn’t shell any quick enough for her. Now that enjoyment has been continued by Renae who does exactly what Jasmine used to do, with the same evident pleasure. She’ll trot along a few steps, pick up a nut, roll it round her mouth, drop it, pick it up, repeat till we give in and crack her one and feed the bits of shelled deliciousness to her ladyship. Any walk this time of year takes us twice as long with all the pausing to crack nuts.

Now, we’ve been really surprised to discover that our resident foodie won’t entertain the walnuts as an edible item. Susie-Belle participates in the waiting patiently with upturned face eagerly watching whilst the nut cracking is performed, keenly snaffles up the proffered pieces of walnut and promptly spits them out. Yesterday we diligently stopped walking, collected, cracked and fed an endless supply of nuts during the walk to her as she seemed so keen to try them, but nope, she didn’t swallow a single piece. Unlike Renae who happily scooped up the spat out rejects from the lane, as well as gobbling up the fat, whole pieces we shelled for her.

Such different likes and dislikes the two of them have, but what’s amazing, is we think that from everything we’ve introduced her to over the past year, this may be just about the only food stuff that Susie-Belle won’t eat, aside from the odd fruit or vegetable, but even those she doesn’t like, she’ll always try once and then not bother with more. With walnuts, they are clearly not to her liking at all.

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