Boiling Chestnuts

I know I told ya'll I was going to roast the chestnuts I foraged for in my 'hood... but since I didn't have a pan big enough to lay them all even & flat in the oven, I decided to try and just boil them in some spring water. (This project was NOT a fail either! It's SOooooo Delicious. YAY!)

ALL YOU NEED:

• chestnuts
• a knife
• water
• a pot

What I read and have been told numerous times is that chestnuts can explode while cooking. I've been told this same thing about sweet potatoes and never seen it happen... but I decided the chestnuts seem more like a bomb.

STEP ONE: Take a sharp knife and draw a lil' X on each chestnut to keep it from exploding. This also makes it way easy to peel open after they are done cooking!

STEP TWO: Dump all your X'ed chestnuts into boiling water. Let them boil for about 20 minutes.

STEP THREE: Peel open at the X and eat dat' yellow-ish nut on the inside. It's GOOD! Make sure you dont eat the funked out rotten gray ones (or at least I didn't cause they smell sour and bad).

It's so good, I ate them all at once. I couldnt stop!!! I felt like a f'en squirrel. :)

I have to go back to that tree and see if there's more...

xoxoxox

Chestnuts & Buckeyes, not the same nut!

Back in the day when I first became interested in foraging for food, I got really excited about all the "chestnuts" falling around my cabin. I collected massive basket fulls, and felt like I had struck gold in the yummy nut lotto! That is until my poor boyfriend at the time ate them.
He believed me that they were chestnuts and while I was asleep one night he boiled a bunch down and began peeling and eating them - he said they tasted bitter and sick but he ate about 10 of them anyway and got really bad stomach probs the next day.
The internet was not as saturated with info as it is now, but he decided to look up more about cooking chestnuts since his were so f'en gross and discovered he'd been eating poisonous buckeyes, otherwise known as "horse chestnuts" ( they are poisonous to horses).
Poor guy. He never was right after that. He never was right before that too though.
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So here are clear pictures for ya'll food foragers out there who might be curious about these nuts...
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This picture below is the big shiny HORSE CHESTNUT, or BUCKEYE. It is poisonous to people and to some animals too. DO NOT EAT THIS NUT!

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This next picture below is a real EDIBLE CHESTNUT! You can eat these, most people prepare them first by roasting or boiling. But HERE they say you can go ahead and eat them raw too. (I am gonna roast mine! mmmmm)

Xoxoxoxo