Walnuts, chestnuts and dates: 3 foods I don't really eat at home that I have discovered locally here.
Li Dan taught me about walnuts when I went fishing with her (and killed my toe). When you get fresh walnuts, they come in a large casing that you have to smash open and that stains your hands black for a week or so before you get to the inner shell that most people recognize. Everyone here seems to have some sort of talent for opening the inner shell with their hands/teeth, but after ripping my finger open and not wanting to break my teeth, I started carrying a nut cracker -- which everyone thinks is hilarious. Once you finally get that open, if the walnut is really fresh, you have to peel the thin skin off the nut itself unless you want it to be really bitter. I have a feeling that if my dad were here he would find it far too much work and try to just eat the whole thing :p
Chestnuts still aren't my favourite food, but they are fun to look at when they grow and the ground seems to be covered in their casings. They just split open and people wack them off trees. Mona ate a raw one tonight, mentioning that she had never done so before, when she suddenly had a lightbulb moment and turned to Simon to ask if they had to be cooked. I thought we were going to have another raw beansprout debate, but he said he thought they were okay.
Dates have always been in the same category as prunes and figs for me -- old people gross food -- but fresh dates are really tasty. They have sort of an apple texture with a tiny pit in the middle. It took me forever to figure out what they were, but now I can't get enough of them!
"Old people gross food"?! Well, prunes, yeah. But figs are wonderful. Have to watch for thorns, though. As mom and I found out in Greece. And I think even I might draw the line at eating whole chestnuts. (Laura had some delicious muffin wrappers at her party, btw.)
ReplyDeleteAt least I remember the difference between figs and cacti. But then, I did get some of those thorns. They were pretty nasty, as I remember. But the figs ... they were fabulous. There's nothing like fresh figs for breakfast, plucked from the tree.
ReplyDeleteIn our back yard in Paris we had a horse chestnut tree..You cant eat Horse Chestnuts as they are poisonous but we put them to good use in a game we played
ReplyDeleteYou cut a hole in the chestnut and put a shoelace through and then took turns trying to bread your opponent chestnut with one person holding the chestnut by the string and the other swinging at it and trying to break it..Some kids cheated by baking their chestnuts to make them harder..Since we had the only Horse Chestnut tree in the neighborhood our back yard was very popular and I had to guard my supply..