Chestnuts and Wassailing, Blight and Good Old Fashioned Holiday Cheer
Okay, I’ll admit it. I actually like going to the mall at this time of the season. Even if I am not particularly interested in buying anything at the time, the holiday lights create a commercialized nostalgia that makes me all warm inside. And yes, I love Christmas music. I am the type of person that will listen to Christmas music any time during the year. However, there is one line of that I always sang with fake emotional attachment. It goes like this: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”
Just what is a chestnut? Was roasting chestnuts really so common? Here’s the low-down on the nuts more often sung about than eaten:
American Chestnut
On the tree, the chestnut is surrounded by a thick coat of burrs. When the nut is big enough to harvest, their burr lining cracks and the nuts fall to the ground with a plop. They still have a hard shell at that point, and, as far as anecdotes go, they are mean suckers to peel. “They make fava beans look like convenience food.”
Death of the chestnut:
Chestnut trees were the East Coast’s sequoia, dwarfing surrounding trees and often outnumbering them as well for they accounted for about 1/3 of the trees running from Maine to Mississippi (Link ). It was even one of the most numerous tree on the North American continent. A fungus carried over on an imported chestnut tree from either China or Japan in the early 1900’s quickly decimated the very susceptible American population. The people of Appalachia who depended on the tree for its wood and nut exports were economically devastated the most (Link). Between 3 billion and 4 billion trees died, leaving only a few isolated trees on the entire continent by the 1950’s.
American Chestnut Habitat
The root system of the American chestnut can still survive against the blight, but the shoots do not grow very far before they are attacked by the blight. The full-grown chestnut trees in America are now mainly either of European or Asian descent. But, a whole throng of American chestnut trees were found along a hiking trail not far from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia (Link).
A born-again chestnut:
Two blight-resistant American chestnuts have been bred in California and are slowly taking up root across America, helping to reintroduce the memory of roasting chestnuts on an open fire to the next generation of carollers (Link ). You can even pre-order some from next season.
More holiday cheer: Wassailing
“Now we go a wassailing” meant in the Middle Ages let’s go get drunk and sing to our apple orchard so that the next year’s harvest will be good. Wassail is from the Anglo-Saxon Wes hal (other spellings include Waes hael), which means “Be in good health” (read).
Photo by Kate Hopkins at AccidentalHedonist.com
4 large McIntosh apples
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/4 cup apple juice or cider
3 12-ounce bottles of ale
1 cup sherry
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
zest of 1 lemon
1. Preheat oven to 350*F.
2. Slit the skins of the apples horizontally about halfway down. Place in a greased baking dish and sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the brown sugar and the apple juice. Bake, basting frequently for about 40 minutes until all the apples are soft. Remove from oven.
3. Pour the ale and sherry into a saucepan. Add the 2 tablespoons brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and lemon zest. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the baked apples and their juice, stir thoroughly, and serve hot. Here’s another version of wassail.
Enjoy!
November 14, 2009
Tags: agriculture, alcohol, food, food event Posted in: Science & Technology
One Response
Oh, now this sounds like one tasty, festive drink! Perfect to save for the upcoming winter holidays, too.
Leave a Reply