Thing 244 Roast Chestnuts on an Open Fire

I'm all to aware that I'm writing this blog after the event, but I promise you, this was Christmassy as hell at the time. It was a veritable feast of festive fun. There were other F words involved, good ones, not bad ones, but I can't remember them, even though I'm freakin' fond of flippin' alliteration.

Let me set a scene for you:

It's dark, and bitterly cold outside. Driving is treacherous at best, hell, even walking isn't exactly a stroll in the... well, you get my meaning. Inside a fire's been lit. The Christmas Tree lights are on. Little Flower is home for Christmas and sitting down with Pony Boy and me and Token Northy and The Frenchman. We're watching Christmas movies and drinking tea and wine. Jealous of us much? Sure you are...

Nat King Cole made this one really. The Christmas Song is a staple in December, and it's opening line... "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." There was no sign of Jack Frost, and if there was, he'd not be nipping at my nose. That's rude. But that festive song, as I was saying, and it's opening line were the inspiration for this Thing.

You may not have noticed, though you probably have, I'm a bit of a Christmas fanatic. I'm not a fan of winter at the best of time, but Christmas is a shining light. In fact it's about a billion shining lights. Some of which are tacky, but most of which are awesome.
By the way, that top picture is chestnuts. Have you ever seen the like? I'd absolutely no idea what they looked like. Which is funny in its own way, when you're listening to a song over and over again and you've no clue what it is you're singing about. Like when you're small and you're singing Mr Bombastic by Shaggy, and you've no clue what he's talking about.

So when The Frenchman picked me up a pack of chestnuts, I seriously thought he was giving me conkers for some reason. "Ugh... thanks dude. I appreciate this...." All the while looking at him like he'd three heads. Took me a while to get the message.

After that it was a straight forward job to just pop them in a dish, whistle some Christmas tunes and sit back and wait. Waiting is dangerous though, it leads to dozing off (incidentally, this is one of my gifts in life, I'm excellent at dozing). So we had slightly over cooked chestnuts...

See Fig 1.1

Fig 1.1 Delicious if slightly overdone...

Talk about your all time easiest, and probably most fun Christmas snacks. It's the most straightforward job to cook, just try not to doze off, then when they're cooked (you'll know when the shell starts to split just slightly), you can crack them out of the shells and eat the insides. Nutty and delicious.

Of course if it doesn't work out: Selection boxes will do nicely.