Chestnuts...

Last Sunday, Slawek and I took Angie and went to Greenwich Park. I love that park. It is so beautiful and pleasing to the eye. Even though there were lots of people there that day, the park was somewhat quiet and peaceful. We took a long stroll amongst chestnut trees, oaks, thorns, birch, broom and heath trees. We stopped for a cup of cappuccino and a piece of carrot cake at the Pavilion Tea House. We laid on the grass and enjoyed magnificent panorama view of the River Thames, the Docklands and the City of London.

While walking through the park's alleys, we realized that chestnuts were everywhere... Chiara and Mauro were going to come over later that day so I thought it would be a good idea to have baked chestnuts with them... Slawek told me that those chestnuts were not the ones you could eat. I, on the other hand, was sure they were the ones... We started picking them from the ground. By the time we finished, we had about 5kg of chestnuts which Slawek had to carry in his backpack... Later at home, it turned out that they were not very good for roasting or baking... Just to make sure, I put a couple of them in the oven cutting their skin beforehand to prevent the fruits from exploding. I think the skin on one of them was not cut properly because after 15 minutes of baking we heard a very loud explosion... I really did not see that coming... How can one tiny chestnut make a mess like this is beyond my imagination... It turned out, of course, that the chestnuts were not very tasty and we ended up throwing them away... I saved just enough of them to make an autumn, chestnut decoration... of well...