The stellar jays have arrived, which means the hazelnuts are ready for the picking.

I love stellar jays, or blue jays (because they are blue, duh). But if it’s hazelnut season we are ‘friends off’ because they steal my nuts! It’s pretty cute to see them picking the hazelnuts and smashing them on tree branches to get the meaty part out, but hey, beaks off buddy those are mine!

It’s my first year harvesting and roasting hazelnuts so we tried it two ways; roasting in the shell and roasting the unshelled nut itself.

The internets tell me that hazelnuts should be roasted at 275 for 15-20 minutes, but my oven continues to ruin my life with it’s spazziness, so 15-20 minutes became an hour. Then I got impatient and cranked the heat to 375 for another 20 minutes, then just lost my mind completely and turned on the toast setting to brown the nuts. We will have to see how successful this ridiculous method was. More to come!