"Chestnuts bursting out the oven door"

Last week-end, we traveled to Jordan's Furniture in Avon, MA and enjoyed three fun things in one location. One fun thing was looking through the vast furniture selection they have. We may be in the market for a new couch for our family room. We'll see. The second fun thing we did was to go to their theater to see an abridged, 3-D version of The Polar Express. Their Motion Odyssey Movie theater adds a "fourth" dimension of movement to the feature. You sit in specially designed seats that move with the action of the movie like the train roaring down a steep ravine or twisting across a frozen lake or flying along with Santa in his sleigh. I had forgotten how much I like that movie and can't wait to see it all the way through (in plain old 2-D) on our TV at home.

The third fun thing we did at the store was something we hadn't expected to do. We walked through The Enchanted Village. This is a series of Christmas-themed scenes from an old village. I don't know the time period it is supposed to depict but it seems to be the late 1800's or the very early 1900's. We enjoyed that so much, I think we're going to go back and take our cameras this time. Perhaps I'll be able to post some pictures and write up more about this exhibit closer to Christmas. [Update: We did get back to the exhibit and took pictures. You can see some of them in my post "The Enchanted Village - part 1" with more to follow.] One of the scenes, though, reminded me of something from my childhood. One of the scenes showed a stand where chestnuts were being roasted. I remember a time when my parents decided it would be fun to try roasting chestnuts themselves.

I had never tasted roasted chestnuts but my parents had. As they talked about it, they made them sound delicious. For some reason, saying something is "roasted" always makes it sound more enticing to me. So, we went to the supermarket and bought some chestnuts. I don't think my folks knew what temperature to set the stove to but I'm sure they figured they'd just keep an eye on them and stop when they seemed to be done. So, into the oven went the chestnuts and we sat back and got ready for the feast. As time went on, they realized that they wouldn't know what to expect the chestnuts to look like on the outside when they were done. As we sat there talking about it, we started to hear noises in the oven. They got louder. Then, we heard a loud noise. Then another. Kind of like an old musket being shot. Not the sharp crack of a modern rifle but a sort of slow pop. When my mother opened the stove door to check, some chestnuts shot out of the oven and hit the opposite wall. Then a few more joined in the onslaught. She quickly shut the door and turned off the heat. It took a while for things to settle down.

Later we found out that you have to pierce the shell of the chestnuts to let out the steam that builds up when they heat. We never did try roasting chestnuts again, though. I guess we hadn't even been trying to roast them in the first place. We were baking them. I found two webpages about roasting chestnuts. My wife and I may try it to show the kids. We'll see. We've got the chestnuts. Now to find a sharp knife!

Here are the two websites that have good instructions:

"How to Roast Chestnuts Over an Open Fire" at The Art of Manliness site

"How to Roast Chestnuts" at Kathy Maister's Start Cooking site

In the second article, be sure to read down to the PS section that talks about another way of preparing the chestnuts that you may find easier than the the other methods.