Suburban foraging

Last week or so a friend posted a thread in a FB group I'm in about chestnuts as a carbon-sequestering alternative to wheat. I can't find it now, but it was this BuildSoil guy who everyone's talking to about chestnuts

Anyway this morning on my run I started off in a different place than usual and found this little pile by the roadside.

I made a nerd joke about "Tribbles for breakfast" but then got on with my run. And as I went I realised that I had to go back there to pick those guys up and see how much nutty fruit I could find in there in the plant-based roadkill. Luckily I had an appointment that took me out that way later in the day and I managed to secrete about my person my gardening gloves and a large plastic bag. The people I had a meeting with probably wouldn't have appreciated the reason for carrying around gardening gloves, so I tucked them deeply away. And then on the way back I got off the bus a stop early and scooted over to the pile of treasure.

It was not quite as rich as I'd remembered it. Lots had been split and crushed by cars and trucks and maybe someone else had already been there and had the same idea. In any case I filled my plastic carrier bag up - the gloves were essential, those burrs are bitey! - and made my way home up and over the hill again.

In the kitchen I put my gloves back on and grabbed a knife, pulling the cough nuts out of their little protective cough sacs and putting them on one side. Quite a few were a bit weedy, one had wormholes in it and a couple had been too open to the air while one or two were still yellow and not really ready to come out and be eaten.

All in all I got 12 ounces of chestnuts that I think I can use. I'm going to wash them thoroughly and roast them, even though when we were kids we'd just nibble on them raw from the tree.

If they work out well there are a couple of other bunches of trees nearby that I can go and collect from and then maybe I'll experiment with making some flour and some weird chestnut bread or pasta.