Chestnuts and Chest X-Rays

Okay, first of all, I have to apologize for giving chestnuts a bad name in yesterday's blog post.  I knew I'd had Jack Frost nip at my nose, and that I'd sung Yuletide carols by a fire; but I couldn't remember ever having roasted chestnuts on an open fire.   Or having tasted a roasted chestnut.  Or having seen one, even.

Don't get me wrong; we're nuts about nuts around our house.  My husband and I eat LOTS of peanuts, cashews, and almonds.  But we never eat chestnuts (or walnuts, or pecans...well, maybe we're not as nuts about nuts as I thought we were).  And I was sure yesterday when I wrote that post that I'd never even laid eyes on this traditional holiday treat mentioned in the opening line of the famous 1946 tune, "The Christmas Song."

So I went on-line to find some images of chestnuts, and I realized that yes, I'd seen them before.

These are chestnuts.  (But then, you probably knew that.)

However, I'm pretty sure that I've only seen unroasted chestnuts, like the ones above, used for decorative purposes, and I don't believe I've ever encountered a roasted one.  Now I'm starting to wonder if my girlhood Christmases were missing something--and I never even knew it!  I am determined to buy some chestnuts this holiday season, and to roast them on an open fire.  And then I'm going to eat some, and after the New Year I'll let you know what I think!

This is how chestnuts look after they've been roasted.  (But then, you probably knew that, too.)

By the way: can anyone out there tell me if they taste good coated in chocolate?

You might be wondering why I'm not posting a picture of the twins' green corduroy Christmas jumpers, the ones I said I was going to have finished by today.  I was making good progress on them Wednesday--but then ended up having to go to the ER with my hubby that night, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia.  He's had a cough for about three weeks, and he's been home sick from work (and he's even been too wiped out to do his daily beloved but behated* P90X work-outs!), so we thought he was battling the flu or something.   But Wednesday afternoon he finally saw his flight surgeon, who listened to his breathing and sent him immediately over to the hospital for tests; and there we learned that if he wasn't such an impressive physical specimen, we might have known a lot sooner than we did how sick he was.  So the good thing about all those years of P90X work-outs is that they made his lungs so strong and fit that when one stopped working, the other did double duty for him and kept him from complete physical collapse.  The bad thing about all those years of P90X work-outs is that the fitness he's achieved from them ended up giving him the illusion that he wasn't really all that ill and didn't need to see a doctor...So, Catch-22.

One unfortunate outcome of the diagnosis is that our flight out to CO to spend Thanksgiving with our oldest son, his wife, and our twin granddaughters is off now.  We had planned to fly out to South Bend for the weekend, and from there, we were going to hop on a flight to CO on Sunday.  The ER doctor told us he thought flying would be no problem--and even said, "Have a good time in CO!"  However, the flight surgeon made the call yesterday that there's to be no airplane travel whatsoever for my guy until he's finished his course of antibiotics and is all healed up, as complications could arise due to the cabin pressure at high altitudes.  He is able to drive, however; so we're planning to take off for South Bend at zero-dark-thirty this morning.  (It's a long car trip--but not nearly as long as a car trip to CO!)  We are so bummed out that we're going to miss having Thanksgiving with that cute little family out west, but at least we can still catch the ND v.Wake Forest game on Saturday and spend some time with son #4, along with his girlfriend, and son #5.

Again, dear readers, sorry for dissing those chestnuts!

The jumpers are about 90% completed now, and I plan to work on the finishing touches when we return from our trip.  I'll post pictures of them early next week, before I mail them out to the girls.

*And I know "behated" isn't really a word--but it ought to be!

And full disclosure: my husband had a CT scan, not a chest x-ray; but that didn't work as well for the title.

And I'm going now!