How do get a chestnut out of its prickly case?

Jenny and Steve dropped almost 300kg of their chestnuts at CERES this week, we're putting them in some of our set boxes as well as the webshop.  When I asked Jenny how they get their nuts out of the prickly cases she replies, very carefully and with two pairs of gloves.

Jenny says the spines have a habit of breaking off leaving your fingers like infected pin cushions.  She points out that if you go to their local pub during picking season you'll notice people casually picking out chestnut spines from their fingertips in between enjoying a drink. 

Jenny and Steve have around 120 mainly red spanish and purtons pride chestnut trees on their Stanley farm near Beechworth.  Their oldest trees, which are about 30 years old now, were planted by the previous farmer who wanted to diversify his apple crop.  They have since planted more trees and are now in the process of grafting their new favourite di coppi variety onto some of their existing stock. 

Jenny says the best way to cook chestnuts is to cut a small slit in the shell, boil them for about 3 minutes then scoop out the flesh to either eat straight, make a soup or stir through roast vegetables.  The big red spanish nuts are hard to peel so if you want to roast yours on a fire or in the oven go for the smaller lighter purtons pride.  

Over the years Jenny and Steve's farming has evolved into a tree centred low intervention approach. When they first took on the farm they pruned heavily each year to encourage nut production but with phytophthora, a fungal disease, killing trees they chose to reduce pruning and accept lower yields in exchange for a healthier orchard.  Steve adds that other challenges for the chestnut farmer are parrots who love to take a little bite out of many nuts and the inevitable sore back during harvest time.

Fewer chestnuts has meant diversifying their farm, Jenny and Steve also grow quinces, which you may have seen recently at Fair Food.  They have also recently put in beehives to harvest chestnut honey, which is beautifully dark and has a distinctive taste.  We're looking forward to getting a few jars in for Fair Food customers in the future.

Chestnuts have a fascinating history in agriculture no more so than on the small Mediterranean island of Corsica where compulsory chestnut tree planting was imposed by Genoese colonial masters in the 16th century. The Corsicans eventually embraced the chestnut and the local population thrived as the growing forest produced abundant chestnut flour, timber and feed for animals. The industrial revolution, World War I and various tree diseases saw a 100 year decline of the chestnut forests but recently Corsicans have begun to re-embrace chestnut culture and more and more of the old forests are being brought back into production.

 

---

Help Name our FODMAP Friendly Box

What a response to the renaming of our Intolerant Box competition. At last count we had over 100 suggestions and a similar number of beautifully silly puns.  If you have a gut feeling you've got the right name for our new FODMAP friendly box we'll take entries up until this Friday (there's a $100 Fair Food voucher for the winner - see below for more info ). Next Sunday I'll put up the list for everybody to vote on. Here's a selection of entries so far;

Rosalie mined a rich alliterative vein The Grateful Gut Box 

Milica's classic song and Top Gun reference in one - You got that FODmap feelin' good guts box -

Sachi and Yasoda's classy Putting FOD On The MAP Box -

and my current favourite

Stop the Bloats -  say no more, thanks Phillip


Here's the info on the competition -  We have a problem at Fair Food – it’s The Intolerant Box – basically it’s so broad in its focus that it doesn’t really address anybody’s intolerances and it’s also too big.  So we’ve decided to go back to the drawing board and develop a new more focussed box, a FODMAP friendly box that’s more the size of our popular Small Mixed Fruit and Veg box.

What is FODMAP friendly, you say?  FODMAPs are Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols (rolls off the tongue doesn’t it).  For many people (about 1 in 10) these fructose molecules are poorly absorbed by their small intestines and the unabsorbed fructose ending up in the large intestine where it’s fermented by bacteria causing abdominal bloating, distension, excessive flatulence, abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhoea, constipation, or a combination of both and other gastro-intestinal symptoms. 

In the 1990’s Melbourne scientist, Dr Sue Shepherd, found that limiting high FODMAP foods was an effective treatment for people suffering from fructose malabsorbtion or irritable bowel syndrome as it’s commonly known.    The diet which is based on lists of FODMAP friendly foods  can sometimes seem counter intuitive; for instance you can eat cabbage all the time, broccoli sometimes but cauliflower not at all but it has been embraced worldwide as one of the few effective treatments for IBS.

The upshot of all this is we are following Dr Shepherd’s produce guidelines for our new FODMAP friendly box, the only thing is we don’t have a name to go with it.  So far the best we've come up with is the Bowel Buddy Box, yeah, yeah it’s terrible we know but we think you can do better.  Last year in our time of need you helped us name the Mini Box.   This year we’re asking for your help again to name our new FODMAP friendly box and for the most popular name we'll give a $100 Fair Food Voucher.

So email your new name or name selections to A Better Name than Bowel Buddy competition.  The winner will be selected by popular vote and receive a $100 Fair Food Voucher– click here to send your entry.
 
 

Have a great week

Chris