Roast some Christmas chestnuts without an open fire

Clay is off this week. Here’s a column first published Dec. 24, 2009:

Today’s question:

I’ve got some big, beautiful chestnuts and have no idea how to roast them. My gas fireplace doesn’t qualify as an “open fire” and open fires are discouraged in town. What now? And if I do get them roasted, what then?

I don’t believe I’ve ever had roasted chestnuts, whether they were roasted on an open fire or elsewhere. Anyway, here’s what you do: Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Make sure the chestnuts are clean and use a sharp knife to make an X on one side of each nut or poke them with a fork.

That’s to let the steam escape when they get hot.

Now place them on a cookie sheet or in some other shallow pan with the sliced sides up.

Roast in the oven for 15 to 25 minutes, or until the chestnuts are tender. When they’re cool enough to handle, peel them and eat up.

My cat likes to “hunt” scraps of paper, cotton balls, the dog’s rawhides, etc., which he then puts in his water dish. Why does he do this? I mean the waterdish part, I understand the hunting part.

There are a couple of reasons why your fearsome hunter may be doing this.

One idea is that it is doing what its larger cousins do in the wild. It’s hauling its kill back to its nest or some other safe place.

Have you ever seen one of those nature shows where a cheetah carries a gazelle or something it had killed up into the crotch of a tree?

Your cat may be doing something like that because it considers its water bowl to be its private place where it is safe to store its kill.

Or it could be that your cat is trying to finish off its kill by drowning it or just trying to soften it a bit to make it easier to chew on, especially the rawhide toys.