Sunday Sneak Peek: Hazelnuts!

The hazelnut harvest has just finished.  For three weeks straight this place was a complete ghost town as every single person who possibly could, headed to their villages up in the mountains to help with the hazelnut harvest.  Slowly the flat spaces down here near the sea began filling up with nuts... literally.

First the husks have to be laid out in direct sun for about three days.  This is the little husk-thingy.  It has three nuts in it:

After these have sufficiently dried its time to remove the nuts from the husk.  

Out sweet neighbor brought us a big bag of nuts in the husk.  Justin and Callie were awesome and spent forever taking the nuts out!  Sometimes bugs would pop out!  Yikes!

After the hazelnuts were out of the husk they look like this:

They had to sit out in the sun for another three days to dry out the shell.  Then it's time to start shelling them.  We have 3 big bags of hazelnuts.  I've only shelled them as I've used them.  I wish some magic fairy would come by and shell them all for me with the swish of her wand!  Ha!

I've been slowly trying out some different recipes.  Let me know if you've got any!