How To Peel A Chestnut

These are the vegetables I cut up before roasting them for our Solstice/Deeksha celebration tonight, including golden beetroots, yellow carrots, orange sweet potatoes and butternut squash -all the colours of summer.  I start peeling the fresh chestnuts I brought back from Portugal  to make the veggies more seasonal. Delia says slit them, boil for 10 mins and then remove hard outer skin and soft inner skin - both snugly attached to wrinkled folds of the creamy kernel.

After several interruptions - the men come back to inspect the conservatory roof-( another leak last night), a call from the garage - the starter motor on my husband's car is falling apart - should they replace it at the same time as the leaking oil pipe at a total cost of £500? and the post arrives with an overdue tax demand, and Christmas cards - I need to explain to my husband who they are all from....and I need to ring a friend for car advice and our accountant for tax advice. 

By the time I return to peeling the chestnuts they have gone cold and are even more unwilling to give up their firm sweet flesh. I persist for awhile then rapidly lose the will to live so I open a tin of already perfectly peeled ones and add them to my small bowl of crumbled chunks. I douse them in heavenly lemon olive oil, a deliciously fragrant Fig and Date balsamic vinegar and stir them into the roasted veggies with some crushed toasted cumin and a handful of chopped coriander. Then I whizz up the red pepper, tomato, chilli and smoked paprika sauce that I cooked this morning and we drive over to our friends' house to celebrate the ending of our year.

Looking back my year has felt a bit like trying to peel a chestnut - hard and resistant and curled in on itself.....and yet I also feel a softening, something helping me to crack through my outer shell to find the sweet kernel inside. And that something is love. Both the giving and the receiving of it - which of course is the same thing. It was so radiant and powerful in the room tonight - even though we are deep  in the darkest time of the year -  I felt as warm as summer and lighter than I've felt for ages.

Thank you to all of you for reading me and accompanying me in the peeling open of my life  - you make more difference to me than you may know.