Chock-Full-o-Nuts Liqueor

So, I guess it was last Thursday when Molly called and asked me to check my nuts. They aren't actually my nuts. The neighbor's giant Black walnut tree hangs over the roof and drops its load every fall along with a ton of leaves. Molly said to cut one open and check to see if the meat inside was spongy still without the any brittle bits of newly formed shell. The flesh of the unripe walnut is white, crisp as an apple and full of deceptively clear walnut smelling liquid. I say deceptively clear because after cutting open a few nuts my hands started to stain brown. The nuts had yet to form a shell so they were ready to turn into Nucino. Sunday morning we picked the nuts. I guess there was a fancy article in the MIX magazine about doing this very thing but without Molly, Pat and Joan I don't think I would have felt compelled to make this stuff and it's so easy. You chop in quarters--though Joan says she did some in a Cuisinart--30 green walnuts and put them in a quart jar. You dump in about a cup of sugar, a long twirly of lemon zest, 1/2 a cinnamon stick and a couple of cloves--again other people put in other things. Then you top the jar off with about half a liter of 100 proof vodka, put the lid on tight and shake it like a Polaroid picture, baby. You set the jars in a sunny window and every day for forty days you turn the jars upside down and evidently after forty days and forty nights you strain the nuts off and can use those bad boys to put on ice cream and around Thanksgiving you can use the walnut liqueur to sip or drizzle about on desserty things. I'm imagining pound cake and homemade ice cream. Ooooh, or my mom's Burnt Sugar cake. Ack Yah!