Today is

By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

Buying and choosing chestnuts

Where do you buy chestnuts? Your grocery store will probably have two kinds of them: Castagne, which are the more common type of chestnuts, and Marroni which are the meatier, larger chestnuts. At times, Marroni are as much as an inch or more across in size. Castagne is fine for boiling but for roasting you will need the Marroni chestnut.

Screen the chestnuts by looking over them carefully and choosing just those that are firm and whose skins are a shiny, rich brown color. Obviously, If they smell moldy, or have a blotchy look, or pin holes - toss those out!

Chestnut celebration

As soon as chestnuts are harvested in autunm, you'll see cauldrons are set up at every corner of the street. Mix chestnuts with sand, sprinkle plain sugar syrup, fry it till the sand becomes pitch-black. The chestnuts will then look shining and bright as if a layer of oil has been applied to the shells. The burning smell flutters all over. People like me who are craving chestnuts would come to buy wihtout seller's calling out. People used to use shovel to fry, now the process is electrically operated.

Chestnut trees

Chestnut trees are tall, between sixty to seventy-five feet. The chestnut seed is enveloped in burr. When the burrs turn earthy brown and crack open, the reddish-brown nuts inside them jump to the ground. The burrs of a tree usually open all at the same time, and it is not unusual to find the ground under a tree to be covered in chestnuts in a day. If some of the chestnuts fall with their burr intact, hitting them with a stick can do the trick of separating the nuts.

CONCLUSION

Historically, chestnuts have throughout the ages provided food and wood products in both European and Oriental cultures. Chestnuts have saved some civilizations from vanishing during famines, wars, and natural disasters. Native American chestnuts offered many promises and comforts to the early colonists, but during a blight that was introduced by importing nursery stock from Asia, the chestnut trees of American were almost eliminated.

Certain chestnut tree colonies survived in isolated locations and because of plant breeding advances, chestnut trees are being reestablished throughout the nation. The original stands of American chestnuts were far superior to all other types in the world in respect to the sweet taste and vast quantities of lumber that was produced. Foreign types of chestnuts such as Chinese, Japanese, and European have been used to implant immunity qualities back into the historical genetic code contained within the tasty kernel of the American chestnut.