igenlode | Food, Glorious Food (Reply)

You know it's autumn when you set out to go for a long walk and end up spending the best part of an hour gathering sweet chestnuts! The trees were absolutely full of them; I could hear the sound of the nut cases falling all around, and every so often one would tumble down within eyesight. Normally 'wild' chestnuts are shrivelled and not worth having — or else the squirrels get all the best ones — but here I was right on the spot, and the nuts were almost the size of horse chestnuts.

I made a makeshift sack out of a knotted silk scarf (what do you mean, you don't carry a square of silk in your inside breast pocket in case of emergencies? ;-) and picked out as many as I could find until the sun started to go down — then hurried for the next hour to get to the station before dark! When cooked, my spoils tasted just like the 'real' ones, and burst open in a most satisfactory manner; there is something very primaeval about eating food one has collected for oneself. Inevitably, some had insects or bad bits in them, but I gave the remnants of those to the rats — their teeth are a much better size for nibbling round the problem than mine are.