Saturday

28 October 2017

— at just after 4:00, neighbor’s cat in at the cat flap, much caterwauling, Bheka and broom to the rescue.

Good Morning All, 

I had two old friends, a school colleague and his wife (not receiving the Day Book), down for lunch. For the semi-recluse I am, this was a pretty big deal, including doing a number on the house, and putting garden flowers (nasturtiums, calendulas, and roses) in vases on several tables.

We had roasted chestnuts, which are seasonal here in Denmark, from mid-October to mid-November, the chestnuts imported from Italy.

If you have never had them, you should hustle your backside straight to your nearest chestnut emporium. When you get them home (figure a dozen for each diner, as each one is very filling), use a small sharp knife (or, as I do, a pair of your wife’s surgical scissors) to cut a cross in the top, so that the shells can spread and open as they bake. Put a 2 cm (3/4 inch) layer of coarse salt in the oven pan (for even cooking) and stand the chestnuts in the salt. Put them in the oven at 160 Celsius (320 Fahrenheit) for 45 minutes.

During the last fifteen minutes, put in a loaf of French flute, which will go with the camembert that—along with grapes—completes this simple, but very tasty meal. 

Mind you, the chestnuts will be hot in your fingers, as you peel back the shells. If you are lucky, the fuzzy middle layer will come off with the shell. If not, don’t worry. The fuzzy layer is also edible. Once you have one peeled, put it on a pad of butter on your plate and let it sink down a bit.

Britta always made lots of them, so that the extras would be available for the out-of-this-world chestnut stuffing she made to go into the turkey at Thanksgiving.

My friends had brought an excellent French wine to go with the meal, and afterwards we had strawberries and whipped cream. 

Of course we chatted away the while, catching up, reminiscing, subjecting each other to deplorable puns, and just generally touching down on the hundreds of places and people and times we have in common, going back 35 years. My only regret being that they are both extremely soft spoken, and my colleague is a stiff-upper-lip Brit of the old school. 

I told them the old joke of the American asking a Brit on the phone to speak more clearly, and the Brit responding that if he spoke any more clearly the Yank would not be able to understand him at all.

I also told him that I had thus far found no way to convince anyone that my hearing loss is an actual handicap. I added that when I brought this to people’s attention, as I was subtly doing now, people were usually most eager to turn up the volume, and that could last for as long thirty or forty seconds. The two of them lasted well over a minute, until none of us could stand it any longer, and we all burst out laughing,

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Johs is in Kinshasa  a couple of weeks doing US AID Disaster Relief work. Here are two snaps that make a bit homesick for good old Africa.