Hickory-Nut Cookies

A friend from Kewascum, near the Kettle moraine, remembers how he and his many sisters would gather hickory nuts sixty-five years ago in the woods and spend the rest of the week pounding their recalcitrant shells with hammers and stones to get at the tiny nuggets of meat inside. Anyone who has grown up in hickory-nut country will understand why hickory nuts are not part of commercially harvested and processed nut cooking. But more’s the pity, for hickory nuts have a dark and smoky taste not