We have a old walnut tree in our yard here on the island. It's riddled with woodpecker holes and no longer produces much, but each year I get a small harvest of tiny but flavourful nuts. Last year, though, I finally got fed up with trying to shell the walnuts after I had picked them in the fall. It would take me hours to pry the shells off a few small handfuls and when I used them in baking I'd often crunch down on an errant piece of shell. Now I pick the nuts while they are green, before the shell has formed, and I make pickled walnuts, an English specialty.

A couple of days before Christmas, while I was chatting on Skype with a friend who lives in Switzerland, she told me about a visit she had recently made to one of the last remaining traditional oil mills there. I was fascinated by her story (and had a hard time imagining shelling enough walnuts to make 32 kilos of nutmeats!) and asked her to write it up and send it along with some pictures to post on this blog. I hope you find her account as delightful as I did. Here's Chris:

"I didn't expect, when I moved to the western shores of Lake Neuchatel, in Switzerland, that I'd find small hand-written signs advertising "Fresh Walnut Oil for Sale" on many fences and doors. Then I discovered that walnut trees grow quite well around here; in my area people actually bid on the crop of any given tree (which in this case are owned by the municipality) and are then able to gather the crop of nuts and take them to be pressed at a local oil mill which has been functioning for several centuries.We came upon the mill because we knew where it was; if you didn't you might go around in circles for some time till you found it! My first impression on entering was the pervasive and rather lovely smell of lightly toasted nuts, the huge bags of shelled nuts waiting to be weighed in, and the rhythmic background noise of the wheels and pulleys constantly clicking. After our walnuts were weighed, they immediately went into the big wooden hopper to be ground into pellets, which looked rather like dog food and quite unappetizing.

They come out of the hopper into a lovely old wooden container which is so soaked with nut oil that it positively glows. I touched it later, thinking it would leave an oily film on my fingers, but no, it was as smooth as velvet, a really beautiful old piece still in constant use.
Then the nut pellets are poured into a toasting pot which is set into an old stone stove. A ladle of water is added to prevent them from scorching while they toast, then the lid is closed and a paddle swishes them around for a few minutes. The stove is about 175 years old, I was told, and was wood fired until 1997, when it was converted to gas. You can imagine the work to keep it constantly fired, from the wood chopping to feeding it regularly. It's a beautiful old thing too, releasing a constant gentle heat.

When the nuts have been toasted, they are scooped into a cheesecloth-lined round wooden form (also very old), wrapped up well, and put under the press. I enquired about how much weight they were pressed with, and the young man who was handling "our" nuts said, with a completely straight face, "60,000 tonnes!"...and as far as I can tell he was serious!

The lovely golden oil started to flow almost immediately, and when each form was pressed (which took 15 - 20 minutes) it was removed from the crushing weight, unwrapped, and the cake of residue (called nillon) set aside either to be returned to its owners or to be ground or broken into chunks for sale at the small adjacent shop.

Not so very long ago, schoolchildren would be given chunks of the nillon as a snack for school, which I'm told was sucked or nibbled on and I'm sure it was a very filling and cheap snack at a time when treats were few and far between. Now, people can purchase the nillon and use it to make a local specialty called "Ground Walnut Tart" which is rich and filling and served in tiny slices. When it's baking, you can smell the wonderful scent of walnut oil all over the house.When we left, with our large milk container two-thirds full of freshly pressed fragrant oil, we felt like our clothing and hair were also permeated with the lightly toasted walnut smell. The men who work at the mill say they enjoy it when they press a different kind of oil, just to have a different smell!

When it comes to souvenirs my many years of travel have taught me that a useful cooking or serving implement beats an article of clothing by a mile. The dozens of kimonos I purchased at flea markets in Japan still sit in a chest in the basement and when I squeeze myself into the gorgeous Thai silk suit I bought in Bangkok, the look is more slightly-chubby-Thai-Airways-flight-attendant than Mata Hari. On the other hand, the oak barrel I dragged home from Montepulciano continues to make wonderful vinegar from the dregs of our wine glasses and the set of dishes I bought in Kappabashi in Tokyo make their appearance nearly nightly on our dinner table.

Last September we took a trip to Santa Fe and I became obsessed with buying a micaceous clay pot. I had read an article about them in New Mexico magazine and was intrigued by the accounts of their unusual heat conductivity and the "sweet" flavour they were said to impart to food, particularly beans. It wasn't my first encounter with micaceous clay; we had bought a small Lacota mask at Taos Pueblo on our honeymoon but hadn't realized that this metal-flecked clay was traditionally used to produce beautiful and highly functional cooking vessels.

The clay, from Northern New Mexico, is a blend of mica and red clay and has been used by the indigenous peoples of New Mexico for hundreds of years. The pots are built using the coil method and were traditionally fired in a large open fire. Modern potters have since discovered that firing the pots first in a kiln and finishing them in a wood fire leads to a more durable product. The black patterns that are a characteristic of these pots are called "fire clouds" and are formed when the burning wood touches the vessel during the firing process.

Finding an affordable pot, however, proved to be a challenge. Micaceous clay objects are not cheap and well-crafted pots usually start at around $100 per quart. I finally found a three-quart pot while browsing around the galleries and artist studios in Madrid, New Mexico, for about $150.

When I got the pot home I could hardly wait to try it. I gently washed it before use and was horrified to find that the clay inside seemed to be rubbing off, forming a pool of muddy water in the bottom. I remembered that someone had told me that you could season (and thus seal the pores) of a ceramic Japanese hot pot or nabe by cooking rice in it before use. I tried this clever trick and it worked perfectly.

I have mixed feelings about September. It is a bittersweet month; another summer has passed too quickly, the days are shorter, and the cool nights are a portent of the rains and gloom to come. At the same time, the crisp September air brings with it a wondrous sense of renewal and hopefulness, too. It reminds me of when I was returning to school in the fall as a child - my notebooks were pristine and unmarked, pencils were sharpened, I had a new outfit and new shoes, and anything seemed possible.

My father passed away at the beginning of July and I didn't get back to the island until the end of the month. We had had an unusually cool spring and early summer and it seemed as though the good weather had been waiting for me to return home. The long, lazy days gave me plenty of time to reflect on my father's full and happy life and get used to the idea of never hearing his voice again (as if someone can really get used to that). Visiting friends and family provided a helpful distraction and the garden and kitchen kept me from allowing my thoughts to drift toward the melancholic.

One of the minor irritations of living on an island is shopping for specific items. With only a couple of small grocery stores you never really know what's going to be available so it's pretty pointless to go shopping with a list. In the summer I see city people wandering through the market looking increasingly desperate as they realize that they won't be able to find the smoked paprika and bomba rice they need for their paella.

There's nothing like a year-long mystery illness to make you appreciate the simple things in life. These days I find myself feeling grateful for everything - cooking a meal, hanging the laundry, baking a loaf of bread, or pulling a few weeds in the garden all seem like small miracles.

Before I got sick I think I was becoming jaded about food. We're spoiled for choice here on the West Coast. In Vancouver there are so many world-class restaurants, representing virtually every kind of cuisine - and much of it is reasonably priced. New restaurants open up almost every week - from opulent temples of molecular gastronomy to local hash houses (and a few of the other kind of hash house, too). It's almost monotonous in its variety. Having a seriously restricted diet forces you to retrain your palate and really taste food again. You can't rely on butter, cream or culinary pyrotechnics to cover up inferior ingredients.

The chicken stew I cooked last week is a good case in point. The ingredients were simple: free-range chicken, onions, garlic, celery, carrots, rutabaga, potatoes and a few herbs - and that's it! No wine, stock or tomatoes, just a cup or so of water to form the sauce.

All the components tasted entirely of themselves and it was one of the best things I'd eaten in a long while. It didn't hurt that all of the ingredients except the celery were local.

A few days later I was inspired by a blog post by David Lebowitz to make eggplant caviar. I picked up some gorgeous eggplants from my friend Dana and smoked them on the Big Green Egg.

There are days when I feel like pinching myself - I'm so lucky to live in a place like this. I went to the market on Saturday with my camera and was thrilled to see so many people there. It was Wine Festival day and many people had arrived at the venue early to do some shopping before the serious drinking began.

The balance between produce,

prepared food,

and crafts, was just about perfect. One of the more famous markets in the Gulf Islands has recently become craft-heavy and somewhat precious. The last time I was there it was difficult to find food amongst all the chachkas, and the little produce that was available was expensive. Locals were a bit thin on the ground, too. Our market has become a real magnet for islanders and it's a good place to catch up on gossip and have a cup of coffee with friends. Tourists are always made to feel welcome, too. It's really come a long way in the last five years.

I don't know whether or not it is a universal experience for all island dwellers but when I travel I find myself inexplicably drawn to other islands. For a number of years I had my eye on a vacation rental on one of the outer islands in the Venetian lagoon, called Mazzorbo (or more properly Mazzorbetto, as the island in question was accessible only by small boat from Mazzorbo). In October of 2005 the planets were aligned and we were finally able to make the trip. The house was far from the Venetian crowds but close enough to make it an easy day trip. To get there we took the vaporetto from Venice to Mazzorbo (about 20 minutes), walked across the island, and jumped into our boat (included with the rental) for the 3-minute crossing to Mazzorbetto. The wooden boat was charming but barely seaworthy - one morning we had to paddle across the canal when the engine stubbornly refused to start.

The house had been a monastery at one time and the supporting walls were over 1000 years old. They were literally crumbling before our eyes - every morning we swept up little piles of dust that had accumulated on the floor and furniture.

One of our neighbours, the farmer who cultivated the fields behind the house, showed us a 400 year-old map that clearly depicted a thriving community of homes and churches, but when we were there only a handful of buildings remained, some of them abandoned. The desk drawer in the hallway held a treasure trove of ancient majolica shards that the owner had excavated in the back yard.