It's chestnut season.

Chestnuts are delicacies for princes, and a lusty and masculine food for rusticks, and able to make women well-complexioned.     John Evelyn, 17th Century Diarist

"Well, shoot, if'n the chestnut is all of that, I might as well pick me up a sackful or two.  There's a couple a big trees over yonder that's droppin' 'em by the bucket full.   'Course, there's a passel of other folks walkin' under those trees ever' day, so I'll have to look sharp to get my share."   D. Foster, 21st Century urban rustick

I had a really good chestnut year. So far my daily pickings have totaled 16, 20, 42, 50, 41, 39, 30, 22, 10,18 and 48. (nice sine wave huh?)  Competition for the existing crop has increased, and I may not get many more. I've used all that I have harvested though.  I have just a few photos to show you.  

 Right from the tree

 Roasted chestnuts, just peel and eat. Jeanne's favorite way to eat them. 

(They kept raw chestnuts on a table at our pension in Madrid (1973) for us to snack on and we bought roasted ones from vendors in the street) 

One easy way to process chestnuts I found was to boil them in just enough water to cover and then grind them until fine in the food processer.  The result is this puree.  

I also added sugar and vanilla to the mixture, cooked a bit more and ground it even finer. The result has a pudding-like consistancy. 

 My plain boiled chestnut puree

 Corn flakes with sweetened vanilla chestnut 'pudding' and strawberry yougurt

 Chestnut flat bread

(one cup white flour/1/2 cup chestnut plain puree) 

Vanilla chestnut pudding with custard and whipped cream

Chunky chestnut and feijoa sauce with candied melon and brandy syrup swirl

Acorn, chestnut and feijoa sauce. 

Yes, I'm back to cooking with acorns....

Since I already had chestnuts in process, I decided to pull out some of my frozen acorn meal and combine the two. As it happened, Jeanne was clearing out our freezer at the same time and found two small containers of feijoa sauce that we made last season.  The combination would be perfect I thought.  

I have learned something more about acorn meal. In the past, I have complained that it is gritty, even after having been cooked. Problem solved with this batch. I ground the meal for a third time, using a mortar  and pestle and got it really, really fine. That was the trick. When I cooked it up, I was surprised at how much water I had to add. It kept getting too thick. The acorn meal was finally fine enough to absorb the water and cook to a smooth consistancy.  

What I'm showing you above is the result. It has the tang of feijoas. I also threw in a handful of raisins just for fun. The chunks you see in it are larger pieces of feijoa. Nice and fruity. 

This will be my breakfast every day until it's gone. Talk about healthy. "Hey," all you vegans out there, "Let's see you beat this."                           -djf

I am adding this note to the end of my post because Jeanne reported to me, when she read it on her screen, that this last section was in a smaller font. I have tried to adjust it, but was unsuccessful. It stayed small. I don't know why. Some glitch in the system somewhere. Thanks for your understanding.  -df

Update:

I am including one more picture. I just finished making this chestnut butter. It is Good.  I'm very pleased that it turned out so well. 

This is 'crunchy' chestnut butter. It's very spreadable, slightly sweet and nutty. I've already tried a CB&J sandwich. It's a winner.