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First I wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours and I hope you had a fun filled holiday this past week. If you are like me, we ate our favorite recipes, tried something new, and ate pumpkin pie for breakfast the next morning! Since I have moved down to Florida, the holiday season has been kinda rough for me. No snow, hardly any Christmas lights put up and to top it off my boyfriends mother does not like to cook so the holiday meals lack the homemade qualities I have grown to love. This year we went out to eat and had a great time with each other but the food still lacked in the love I feel should be in a Thanksgiving Meal.
So with that being said, when I was going to our local Publix to get breakfast foods for our Thanksgiving Breakfast in Bed Surprise, I saw these chestnuts and thought hmmmm I wonder what these taste like? What is the texture like? The smell? So I bought a little less than a pound for $3.50 and brought them home for a good roasting. I have never had these before so off to google I went to see how to cook these lil buggers. Many of the pages stated that I had to somehow had to put an X through the shell in order to prevent them from exploding in the oven. So I took my handy dandy knife and tried and to saw an X in the nut. This was pretty hard since they wanted to have me cut them on the flat side of the nut which leaves the nut to lay on the round part. This causes the nut to become slippery and fingers could easily be lost.
I did however manage to cut the X's in them by doing two things. First lay the nut on a tea towel so it is not so slippery when cutting them. Secondly before you attempt to saw an X in the nut, take the tip of your knife and put a small hole in the nut. This allows you to place the knife in the grove for easy cutting.
I felt accomplished after cutting the twenty-seven or so nuts. It was hard work for something I wasn't sure I would like. But I was half way through the cooking journey. I also looked into what a chestnut actually tasted like and the information I did find was quite interesting. I found that the chestnut has twice the amount of starch as a potato! I also found a few Gluten Free recipes that uses chestnuts such as chestnut bread and cheesecake. So with these little guys finished into a 375 oven and roasted for 20-35 minutes. 
Once they are out of the oven, let then cool down and peel them. The shell turns into this paper like husk which is easy to peel off. If your nuts are not easy to peel then they are bad or they need to be left in the oven longer. Out of my twenty-seven or so nuts, 4 were bad. I took a 1/4 stick of butter and melted it down with cinnamon and salt. Pop them back in the oven and let them turn a golden brown (roughly about 5 minutes). So this is the exciting part! How do they taste? Well I did not like them one bit. The texture was starchy and soft and most nuts I eat are crunchy and salty. However Randy loved them! I don't understand the love of these nuts but it is a process I enjoyed trying out and my food knowledge has grown from this adventure. All in all try it out. Never know you might find it worth while or you will find a store to get the jar ones!
