Foraged Sweet Chestnuts

Morning Glory

Morning Glory

Obsessive cook
Staff member
Joined
19 Apr 2015
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Location
Maidstone, Kent, UK
These were bagged yesterday:

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Photographed today in natural light using Fuji FinePix camera (Pentax is out of action)!

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What to do with them, that's the question!
 
Roast them on an open fire while Jack Frost nips at your nose.
And now I have an ear worm of I'm dreaming of a White Christmas.
 
Cinisajoy said:
Roast them on an open fire while Jack Frost nips at your nose.
And now I have an ear worm of I'm dreaming of a White Christmas.
Click to expand...
No fires in this house, open or otherwise! I'll roast them in the oven and then decide what to do with them.
 
morning glory said:
White Xmas not likely down your way, is it?
Click to expand...
Where I live, there is a 50/50 chance.
Last year, Christmas was super nice, in the high 60'sF, but unfortunately the next evening was 20F and ice and snow.
This was the first time hubby had the day after Christmas off so we drove down Christmas eve and surprised my mother for Christmas. We were going to stay through the 27th but with the storm coming in we just spent Christmas together and left early the next morning. We beat the storm by 20 minutes.
My mom lives south of us and the storm was coming from the north.

Some years, Christmas is in the 70's and other years you would be lucky to get across the street. There might be a foot of snow though snow is more likely in mid-January.

I was teasing about the open fire but needed to share the earworm.

My mom lives 500 miles SE of us and has had 2 days below freezing since 1980.
The town 200 miles north of us always gets snow.
We are kind of on a border between very cold and rarely freezes.

We have also seen it go from 80f to 40f (4c) in under an hour. You learn real quick out here from September to May, keep a jacket in the vehicle at all times. You never know what the weather is going to do.

Other weird things: I have seen it rain at my house but not the neighbors on either side.
Or raining in the front yard but not the back yard.
Or once had to outrun a dust storm that was coming hard and heavy from the north.
Dust storm is rather like a rain storm but it is dry dirt and sand blown in from other places. You can tell where it came from by the color of the dirt and sand.

Two days ago, we were in the 80's. (27-30c) As I am typing this, we are at 60.(15c)

West of us is even worse for strange weather. Hubby has seen it go from 80 when he got to work to ice on the derrick when he left work. He was working in the oilfield at the time.
 
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Well this shows my ignorance where geography is concerned. I'd imagined Texas as hot all year round.:oops: I'm off to consult a map...
 
Well, I'm still puzzled. Texas seems to be more or less parallel with Morocco and about same distance from the equator. Does it snow in Morocco?
 
In answer to your question, yes it can and does snow in Tangier. I googled it. Which is at approximately my latitude.
Now I am guessing you looked at my location in Texas.
From north to south:
Latitude in Texas ranges from 36.3 N to 25.5 N. That is a distance of 1200 km/745 miles.
So there are many different climates in Texas.
It appears the snow line pretty much stops at about 30.0 N latitude except with extreme storms.
Note: Elevation also places a small part.
We go from sea level to 8700 feet in elevation. My mom is at sea level and I am at almost 3000.
 
To either help your confusion or add to it, here is some more interesting facts.
Texas has at least 5 separate ecosystems. In the western part of the state, we have mountains and deserts. In the northern part (the panhandle) we have plains. In the eastern part of the state, we have forests. The southern part of the state has the Gulf Coast and goes into desert the farther west you go. We also have the hill country which has most of our lakes. It is in the central part of Texas.
The southeastern part of Texas does stay warm throughout the winter. The northern part of Texas gets mighty cold. Amarillo has been known to stay below freezing for weeks at a time.
Dallas and Fort Worth gets more ice than snow.
If you visit Fort Davis (McDonald Observatory) in the early summer and plan to stay overnight, bring a jacket and shorts. Daytime temperatures are usually around 95 (35) but night time temperatures are typically around 60 (15).
Contrary to popular belief, deserts are not always hot. They are one of the harshest environments on earth. It is possible to get heat stroke during the day and frostbite that same night. The extremes can be massive. Not to mention (unless we are in a drought), the severe thunderstorms we get in this region in late spring and early fall.

We had a 3 year drought recently. Most of Texas got NO precipitation at all. We lost 5 or 6 lakes.
In one area of Lake Texhoma, they found people that had disappeared decades before still in their cars.
Then came the floods. It was interesting to see lakes go from empty to overflowing.

2 other common misconceptions about Texas.
No we do not all have oil fields in our front yards and cattle on the back 40.
And just because two people live in Texas, it does not mean they are close enough to visit every day.

So does that tell you all you ever wanted to know about Texas.

And the food is as varied as the land.
 
Cinisajoy said:
In answer to your question, yes it can and does snow in Tangier. I googled it. Which is at approximately my latitude.
Now I am guessing you looked at my location in Texas.
From north to south:
Latitude in Texas ranges from 36.3 N to 25.5 N. That is a distance of 1200 km/745 miles.
So there are many different climates in Texas.
It appears the snow line pretty much stops at about 30.0 N latitude except with extreme storms.
Note: Elevation also places a small part.
We go from sea level to 8700 feet in elevation. My mom is at sea level and I am at almost 3000.
Click to expand...
That would explain it then!
 
Sweet chestnut soup.

Sweet potato and sweet chestnut soup.
Any stew or casserole that uses other root veg. They go really well with potatoes, parsnips, carrots, leeks, etc. Just pop them in whole towards the end of the cooking time and let them boil. They are likely to be starchy not sweet though. UK ones don't get enough sunshine looking enough to get to the sweet stage.

Also check them over very carefully for little holes in the brown shell. Through any with them. Don't waste time shelling those ones. They will have grubs in them. I also have found that the easiest to peel/shell are the ones which haven't yet gone dark brown. By far the easiest a re the big plump ones that are still yellowy in color. A local tree at my last residence in the UK used to have only 1 or 2 nuts per outer shell and produced the largest sweet chestnuts you have seen. I routinely took 15kg or more of shelled sweet chestnuts every year from that 1 tree... Hummm mmmm...
 
I also think you will have a lot of failures in there as well going by the photos. There are lots of empty shells where the chestnut had not developed (common in the UK) and I think you will find that most of the good ones have already been taken by squirrels. Usually you need bright green unopened outer shells and only the middle but will be viable unless it is a 2 but shell... Sorry
 
Cinisajoy said:
To either help your confusion or add to it, here is some more interesting facts.
Texas has at least 5 separate ecosystems. In the western part of the state, we have mountains and deserts. In the northern part (the panhandle) we have plains. In the eastern part of the state, we have forests. The southern part of the state has the Gulf Coast and goes into desert the farther west you go. We also have the hill country which has most of our lakes. It is in the central part of Texas.
The southeastern part of Texas does stay warm throughout the winter. The northern part of Texas gets mighty cold. Amarillo has been known to stay below freezing for weeks at a time.
Dallas and Fort Worth gets more ice than snow.
If you visit Fort Davis (McDonald Observatory) in the early summer and plan to stay overnight, bring a jacket and shorts. Daytime temperatures are usually around 95 (35) but night time temperatures are typically around 60 (15).
Contrary to popular belief, deserts are not always hot. They are one of the harshest environments on earth. It is possible to get heat stroke during the day and frostbite that same night. The extremes can be massive. Not to mention (unless we are in a drought), the severe thunderstorms we get in this region in late spring and early fall.

We had a 3 year drought recently. Most of Texas got NO precipitation at all. We lost 5 or 6 lakes.
In one area of Lake Texhoma, they found people that had disappeared decades before still in their cars.
Then came the floods. It was interesting to see lakes go from empty to overflowing.

2 other common misconceptions about Texas.
No we do not all have oil fields in our front yards and cattle on the back 40.
And just because two people live in Texas, it does not mean they are close enough to visit every day.

So does that tell you all you ever wanted to know about Texas.

And the food is as varied as the land.
Click to expand...

:o_o: a very mixed bag of weather. Thank you for that interesting info, I have learned something today. Texas doesn't get mentioned much so I suppose there is the misconception that all of Texas is hot all year round.
 
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