chestnut cocooning

Dear S.,

it's chestnut season! Last sunday we went into a nice park in Borgerhout and stumbled over hundreds of gorgeous shimmering brown chestnuts.
I know that you love them so much :)
As a child, I used to go outside and collect them with my mum and friends to construct little wood figures, with beechnuts (Bucheckern) and acorns (Eicheln). We rarely have the tame sort of chestnuts in woods with us at home, so I do not know the tradition of cooking with them myself, but I do remember them from christmas markets. So, it was a very first time for me to prepare chestnuts. I loved them! We simply roasted them in a pan for about 20 mins. mmmh, such cosy food!
But first, some forest impressions:



(nuts in chest? is that why they are called like this?)



leavesnutschestsleavesnuts!




be-au-ti-ful. When I saw these empty chestnut covers, a rather special german word came to my mind: sich einigeln. The term comes from the thing a hedgehog (Igel) does when it is scared or wants to sleep, it rolls up into a tight ball with all its spines (Stachel) pointing outwards. You use sich einigeln to say that someone closes oneself off from a conrontation/the outside world. Funnily enough it is translated with "to cocoon", which has a rather positive connotation for many people. For me, sich einigeln certainly has a positive connotation as well: what a good idea to protect yourself against autumn/winterness by rolling up like a hedgehog or sit as comfortably as a chestnut in its shell. But don't forget to open the door for friends and all that.
So, that was a lot of bla. now you deserve another picture ;)




This huge heart with the universal love message is carved into a tree in the park.
And here comes the eating part:




I also made chestnut-rum-chocolate pralines, here they are:




They were a lot of work (cook chestnuts, open them, peel them, mash them, rum/cacao/sugar them, form into little balls, glace with chocolate, chill.), and for my personal taste they are too chestnutty.

Oh well, I'll try to work for uni now. or read the paper. or knit.
This week I had an interesting talk with an old friend of mine about "Autumness". Every year when it strucks me, I try to fight it off and have the tendency to get all upset about it. Instead, my friend suggested, it is a better idea to just accept it. Embrace the fact that I get a little slower in autumn, that I need more time for cocooning, mich einigeln, and so on. This sounds good. I'll try. Not to be perfect but to just be autumn me.

Much love,

M.