WALNUTS!!

English walnuts are good, but Black Walnuts are best...if you can get the things open! Sledge hammers, firearms and explosives will usually crack the shell, but don't leave much to eat. General Lafayette wrote about trying to crack black walnuts, which were served at a dinner, with small hammers and anvils. The nuts were flying all over the room, and Lafayette claimed that battlefields were less dangerous. You can make a brown dye from the hulls, and many a Confederate soldier used it to change captured Yankee uniforms into something less...blue. It kept them from getting shot, by their own side and the Yankees!