Chestnuts of Death

So back in October, the trees all around our house started dropping tons of chestnuts. We saw a little boy and his dad bagging up hundreds of them, so we figured we’d do the same and roast some in the oven.

We looked up how to do it online, and it’s quite labor intensive. Cut an X in each one, boil them, then crack/peal them. We were going to roast some, make an Austrian dessert, which is a type of chestnut ice cream with others, but with the bulk of them commit to a multi-day recipe process of making candied chestnuts. 

Karen had the brilliant suggestion to roast a few and try them before spending days making candied chestnuts. They look ok, right? Who wouldn’t trust roasted chestnuts from that smiling face?

Well, unfortunately they’re chestnuts of death. We ate one, and the first bite was a bit starchy, like a potato; immediately followed by an extremely foul and bitter taste. That bitter taste sort of screamed “toxic!!!! don’t eat me!!!!” So I tried another to be sure. They all had that nasty taste. So we looked it up online, and it turns out this type of chestnut is poisonous. But it looks pretty close to the ones that are safe.

The kids were the saddest of all because they had the time of their lives running from tree to tree filling their bag with chestnuts. Only to have us throw them all away. Good thing we didn’t spend 2 days cooking them!