Remember when I said I like to forage for food and that you shouldn’t eat something unless you’re 100% sure it’s edible? Well I guess that bit of advice was meant for me.

Walker and I kept seeing this great big chestnut trees all around the neighborhood and recently I had seen a recipe for chestnut puree and was all excited to try it with some foraged chestnuts. I was on a walk yesterday afternoon and saw some great big chestnuts on the ground. I gathered them up excitedly and proudly showed them to Walker when I got home.

I scored each one like the recipe said and put them in the oven to roast. Maybe 20 minutes in one exploded! We took a look and decided we better take them out before another one exploded. They didn’t quite have that sweet chestnut smell and when we tried a little bit that had exploded in the oven we immediately spit it out. It tasted bitter and not at all good. That’s when we started to question what we were actually eating. At first I wondered if uncooked chestnuts were bad for you but upon a quick google search realized that the type of chestnuts I had were poisonous to consume. Ah!!

So just to be clear horseshoe chestnuts which seem to be all over Seattle are POISONOUS! Do NOT eat them! Luckily we had only touched a small amount to our tongues but we called poison control just to be safe. I’m thinking this time of year they get this particular questions a lot because he answered so quickly. He said you would have to ingest quite a bit to get sick but since we didn’t ingest any a mouth rinse and a tooth brushing would be good enough. Phew! We were both sweating it out for a bit and refusing to swallow. Oy!

What did I learn? Even if you’re sure it’s edible it won’t hurt to double check before you try to eat it. I won’t stop foraging but I will be extra, extra careful next time. Maybe it’s time to find an edible foraging guide. Anyone know of a good one?