hazelnuts/filberts

[Robert Kelly]

all through my childhood (1940s...) I encountered filberts in markets and
delis in NYC, so labeled, both scrawled on paperbag signs, and printed on
cellophane bags.  It was years before I discovered that this was the
famous hazelnut of literature, folklore and recipes.  Right now I can walk
into a supermarket and find  slightly glossier bags of filberts with no
reference on them to hazel.  In NYC, hazel was a color of the eye (my own
were so described on my draft card -- another thread will have to explain
what _that_ was).

RK

On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Peter A. McGraw wrote:

> I was somewhat surprised at Andrea's posting.  To my knowledge, Oregon is
> the only place in the U.S. where this nut is grown, at least commercially,
> and to my knowledge it is the only part of the country where it's called a
> "filbert" instead of a "hazelnut."
>
> Trying to confirm this, I checked DARE and to my surprise found neither
> word.
>
> You can find canned hazelnuts in Oregon stores (even if they were grown in
> Oregon), but you'll look in vain for a grower who calls his spread a
> "hazelnut orchard"--or at least you'd have looked in vain for such a person
> when I was growing up on an Oregon filbert farm.
>
> Just today I ran across a newspaper story about an organization called the
> Hazelnut Marketing Board, based in Portland.  Nothing strange about that if
> they are trying to market the product nationally, but what was strange was
> that the article, from the local paper in Wilsonville, the nearest town to
> our family filbert farm, referred to a "local hazelnut grower."  I wonder
> if the newspaper writer is an ignorant newcomer.  It's hard to imaging that
> the local usage could be changing--it would still seem bizarre for me to
> call the nut anything but a filbert when talking to another Oregonian, at
> least when referring to the nut when it's still on the tree or on the
> ground or being picked.
>
> Can anyone report the use of "filbert" outside of Oregon?
>
> Peter Mc.
>
>
> --On Mon, Jun 26, 2000 10:45 AM -0700 Andrea Vine <avine at ENG.SUN.COM> wrote:
>
> > Hmm, how about hazelnuts/filberts?
> >
> > Greg Pulliam wrote:
> >>
> >> How about garbanzos/chickpeas?
> >> --
>
>
>
> ****************************************************************************
>                                Peter A. McGraw
>                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
>                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu
>