Each nut should be cracked separately, and any that smell funny, are hollow, or have dark interiors should be discarded. It will be noisy, but take the cracked nuts and place them in a high-speed blender. Process into a coarse meal. After the water is at a simmer, add the nut mash and stir occasionally.

The surface of the pan will become covered in a raft of foamy nut cream as it begins to simmer. Almost all of the shell fragments sink, but some will certainly get caught in the foamy cream. I like to spoon this off and add it to the "second wash" for more flavor and to get rid of nut shells from the finished milk.Once the foam has been removed, simmer the mixture for another 15 minutes or so. Then, turn off the heat, wait a few seconds for the larger shell fragments to settle, and then begin ladling off the nut milk.

Ladling off milk requires a genuine art; you want to wait just long enough for the large shell pieces to settle, but not so long that all the nut meats are carried away.

You'll get the hang of it if you gently swirl the pan. To continue scooping off the nut milk, you'll eventually need to tilt the pan. Nevertheless, don't try to get it all out because doing so will result in shell fragments.

Add a dash of cinnamon and maple syrup to taste to the final nut milk to season.

To prepare the second wash, which is a weaker nut milk that is ideal for cooking rice or polenta or serving as the base of a soup because it is not as thick as the first wash, save the remaining nut meats and milk. It's funny to think of how good squirrel soup tastes when made with nut milk.