Marrons

Autumn is upon Geneva. The leaves are just starting to turn with the yellows and golds already coming out. The air is crisp and today is a lovely day with temperatures in the high 60's and a light breeze. Tim and I went to the farmer's market this morning to get our groceries for dinner tonight. Every time Tim visits he brings another suitcase of my stuff...and regardless of what fits in he brings one of my Cooking Light Annual cookbooks. Tonight we're having Roasted Chicken with Dried Plums and Shallots and Swiss Baked Potatoes (how fitting). Before leaving, I went to my new favorite website, www.translate.google.com and translated all of the vegetables into french so that I could order what I needed from the stands at the farmer's market. The market is a closterphopic's nightmare...it's packed with people ordering and pushing through to get the best produce. I tend to go the least crowded stand I can find so that my lack of French doesn't slow down the entire food-buying community of Geneva. For the first time today I ordered everything I needed in French (with a bit of pointing due to my poor pronunciation). So now I've got a kitchen full of eschallots (shallots), oignons (onions), ail (garlic), fenouil (fennel), poulet (chicken) and pommes de terre (potatoes).

On the way back from shopping we passed a little wooden cabin on a street corner (that wasn't there last week) that seemed to have large vats of something smoking. Later in the afternoon, we passed another one in a different part of town. The sign on the front said Marrons and there was a line of people waiting to purchase whatever they were selling. Naturally, I had to try it. We got to the front of the line and I pointed at the 100 gram sign (I don't know how to say 100 yet), handed over my 2.60 francs and then watched the lady scoop in some piping hot somethings into a paper cone. I pulled one of the large nut looking things out of the bag and realized what I must have ordered. These are chestusts roasted on an open fire! It seems bizarre that I could sing the song every christmas, yet have made it through my entire life without actually eating a roasted chestnut. We peeled the shells off, careful not to burn ourselves and walked to lake. The taste overall is fine...I'd much rather have a nice piece of chocolate, but still, I love that there are these little stands all over selling these things. It felt like the perfect way to enjoy a fall day...peeling and eating warm chestnuts, walking along the lake and looking at the changing trees in the parks along the lake.
So ton