Oh my goodness. Walnuts loom large in my history. When I was a little kid, having walnuts was quite a luxury. My grandma would always have a bowl full of un-shelled nuts in a bowl with a nut cracker at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was so fun to crack the nuts and pick the nut out of the shell. They tasted so delicious.
Now that I’m older, walnuts are a little more affordable than they were 30 or 40 years ago, comparatively speaking. Also, we tend to buy them already shelled in big bags and keep them in our freezer until we are ready to eat some or use them in recipes. If you keep them out of the fridge, they tend to go rancid fairly quickly (in about 3 weeks or so) but they’ll keep almost indefinitely in the freezer, and they don’t actually freeze, meaning that they don’t become hard. You can take them right out of the freezer and they’re ready to eat.
I love them plain or with a tiny bit of sea salt. They’re marvelous chopped up and thrown into a salad of romaine lettuce, crumbled blue cheese, and dried cranberries with a vinaigrette.
The best place to eat walnuts is in a Brownie. Second best place to put walnuts is in Fudge
I agree with @1TubeGuru that walnuts are delicious in pumpkin bread. They’re also good in Banana Bread
They’re also good in Oatmeal Cookies
I love them chopped up and sprinkled on almost any kind of cereal, especially Grape Nuts.
And let’s not forget about Cinnamon Rolls with Walnuts
Walnuts taste similar to pecans, only they’re a little more savory, rather than sweet. These two nuts can be used inter-changeably.
Sprinkle some chopped walnuts on an ice cream sundae. You won’t be disappointed.
I almost forgot, one of my favorite things in the whole world is Walnut Streusel Sour Cream Coffee Cake. This breakfast dessert does not contain coffee, it is meant to eat with morning coffee. It’s so good!
If you want to taste something really decadent, you might enjoy Makdous (Middle Eastern preserved baby eggplants stuffed with walnuts and pomegranate). This is one of the few ways I actually like eggplant. These little ones, and the way they are preserved, taste good and have a different, more pleasant texture than your standard eggplant/aubergine.