Walnut “Cheese”

Walnuts and apples always remind me of fall. I eat them year round, but I just think they taste best in the fall. I love them both.

I also love fall, and all the fall and halloween decorations. My husband claims that Halloween is my feast day. Hmmmm.

Several years ago, (okay, many years ago) when our nephew was very young, I used to pick him up from pre-school occasionally, and we would have a “date”. Typically, this consisted of a few hours at either Chucky Cheese or Target (he loved the hot dogs and buying videos–born to shop, baby!)

On one of these outings, sometime in the fall, we were at Target and there was rather a long line at checkout. As I steered him towards the end of the line, I wondered how I was going to keep him occupied for the approximately sixteen hours I estimated we would be standing there. Turned out, I didn’t need to worry.

Spotting a fire extinguisher on a nearby wall, he kept trying to push aside the person in front of us to get a better view (his life ambition at that point was to be a fire fighter). To be honest, I was not unhappy that he was exceedingly interested in the fire extinguisher and not the person in front of us since they were dressed all in black with lots of medallions draped around their neck, enormous silver rings on every finger, long, frizzy, gray hair and…wait for it…a black, pointed hat. I swear. You can’t make this stuff up.

I could just just imagine the questions he would ask: Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Do you know Harry Potter? Where is your broom? I loved the kid, but he was not known for his tact.

The extinguisher was doing the trick though, and he barely noticed the “witch” in front of us. They, however, noticed us, as my nephew kept bumping and banging and thumping into them in his efforts to get close to the extinguisher.

“Sorry ma’am,” I offered after the first offense.

And got a glare over the shoulder that threatened to turn me into a toad. Gee, some people are so touchy.

“Apologize to the lady, ” I instructed the next time he body checked her with a move that would make the WWE sit up and take notice.

Another one-eyed malevolent stare. Hmmm. Should I be worried that a wand was about to be pulled out? Where did suburban, Target shopping witches even keep their wands? I looked at he exit, judging the distance. Could we make it out safely before we were cursed? How would I break the news to his parents that their son had been changed into a slug? What if things escalated to one of the four unforgivable curses?

Before you can say Avada Kedavra, I squatted down, looked him in the eye and tried one last tack: “What would a firefighter say if he saw you bumping into the nice lady in front of you?”

This time, I got the full-on evil eye, as the “witch” turned completely around, hands on hips to confront us.

Only it wasn’t a witch at all. It was, in fact, a wizard.

And here I was worried that my nephew would say something offensive. Oops. My bad.

Ingredients:

1 cup walnuts, soaked several hours, then drained
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon minced garlic (about 1 clove)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon walnut oil (or olive oil)
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 apple (optional) or use enough water to get the sauce to the desired consistency