Fresh walnuts

What to do when you are given a lovely big bag of walnuts and don't have a nutcracker? Hmm... I did what many of us would these days and googled the problem. Up pop plenty of videos demonstrating complicated methods of cracking walnut shells. I fetch a regular dinner knife as recommended in one of the videos, but the first walnut I pick up splits in two in my hand! All but three open easily that way, the others I prise open with the knife. After that I am left with about 250 grams of freshly shelled walnuts, which I lightly crush in the mortar and pestle. A Matthew Evans recipe for honey and walnut biscuits that I saved from an old SBS Feast magazine years ago uses 150 grams. The rest I add to a maple syrup granola mix and bake in the oven. I'm sure I'm not just imagining that they taste better than the store bought walnuts from a packet.