mail call, and food

[cellio]

Today's mail brought a lovely card from browngirl (the "happy everything" card), along with a completely-unexpected card from lyev. Thanks, guys! (In case you hadn't figured it out, I use "guys" in the gender-neutral sense. :-) )

Today's mail did not yet bring a couple of DVDs I ordered nearly two weeks ago. Sigh. Fortunately, we are getting together with my family the weekend after Christmas, not the weekend before, so there's plenty of time yet.


The choir dinner was tonight. Wonderful food and pleasant company, and I left with fewer cookies than I arrived with. I brought home some assorted dairy cookies that I couldn't eat tonight with the meat; I'll ration them over the next few days. :-)

Fran roasted a turkey. They were away for Thanksgiving, and apparently she missed doing it. The turkey was good; the stuffing was wonderful. I'll have to get her recipe at some point. It included apples, raisins, and chestnuts; I've never cooked with chestnuts before (or knowingly eaten them, actually).

It's enough that Fran and Alan let us invade their house every week when neither of them is even in the choir. And then they feed us in grand fashion once a year. I guess we don't sound too bad. :-)

Comments

Chestnuts

[lefkowitzga.livejournal.com]

My first experience of roasted chestnuts was @25 years ago in New York City. Mom and Dad bought me some from a street vendor. Now they usually have peanuts or cashews already shelled. It's not the same thing. This is a quintessential New York experience, IMO, eating hot chestnuts bought from a street vendor while walking down wind-swept streets between skyscrapers... ah.

Anyway, it is not too hard to cook chestnuts. Joy of Cooking describes how to do it. In a nutshell (pun intended), you cut an X in the flat part of the nut, spritz with oil, and cook in the oven. Cooking time and heat will vary. They peel more easily while hot, which is a bit of a challenge. I thought she was going to put the nuts through the food processor, but she just tossed them in as they had come out of the shells, which is why there were recognizable nut pieces in the stuffing.

I would be happy to make you chestnuts sometime. They are quite tasty, even without the blustery New York streets as a spice.

I would also be happy to post the stuffing recipe.

Re: Chestnuts

[cellio]

Ooh, chestnuts without blustery winds? You've got a deal. :-) (Actually, I'm not sure I'd recognize a chestnut if I met it in the grocery store. As I said, no prior exposure...)

Please do post the stuffing recipe!

In the oven???

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

"In a nutshell (pun intended), you cut an X in the flat part of the nut, spritz with oil, and cook in the oven."

*Sigh!* You poor thing. Never having tasted the flavor of (song cue) "chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." (song off). I understand. That's how I had chestnuts the first four decades of my life. Our house has a wood burning fireplace. Our first Christmas here, I roasted chestnuts in it. There's a difference! They're far better than oven roasted chestnuts. It's like the difference between a live concert and a tape. BTW, the first batch I made I put them in an aluminum pie tin just like I used to do with the oven. The fire ate thru the bottom and dumped them into the flames. Now I used the 'coal scuttle' that hangs there. (We've got all the toys, the scuttle, the poker, the bellows, etc. What's a fireplace without theatre? :D))