Chestnuts & Buckeyes, not the same nut!

Back in the day when I first became interested in foraging for food, I got really excited about all the "chestnuts" falling around my cabin. I collected massive basket fulls, and felt like I had struck gold in the yummy nut lotto! That is until my poor boyfriend at the time ate them.
He believed me that they were chestnuts and while I was asleep one night he boiled a bunch down and began peeling and eating them - he said they tasted bitter and sick but he ate about 10 of them anyway and got really bad stomach probs the next day.
The internet was not as saturated with info as it is now, but he decided to look up more about cooking chestnuts since his were so f'en gross and discovered he'd been eating poisonous buckeyes, otherwise known as "horse chestnuts" ( they are poisonous to horses).
Poor guy. He never was right after that. He never was right before that too though.
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So here are clear pictures for ya'll food foragers out there who might be curious about these nuts...
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This picture below is the big shiny HORSE CHESTNUT, or BUCKEYE. It is poisonous to people and to some animals too. DO NOT EAT THIS NUT!

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This next picture below is a real EDIBLE CHESTNUT! You can eat these, most people prepare them first by roasting or boiling. But HERE they say you can go ahead and eat them raw too. (I am gonna roast mine! mmmmm)

Xoxoxoxo

Jimson Weed

Little Shop Of Horrors anyone? Jimson weed (also known as Thorn-Apple) is the kind of plant that has so many nuances it becomes legend in your garden or field. Let's start with this...it's a nightshade- a smelly, stinky weed so bad when you pick it, it leaves your hand smelling like poisoned meat nutty hell fire. It's nasty funk scent isn't just confined to it's stem and leaves, according to old farmers here if you plant your squash next to it the poor squash comes out tasting like Jimson Weed! Woo gross. But it gets even more curious then that...

Jimson Weed is considered a "virulent narcotic poison". Dat's some big words that mean this plant is a toxin that can be easily overdosed. The reason people overdose on this smelly ass plant is because it can also make a person hallucinate, with a little vertigo & nausea & delirium & possible death thrown in the mix for good measure. The Navajo Indians described ingesting Jimson like this "Eat a little, and go to sleep. Eat some more, and have a dream. Eat some more, and don't wake up" - creepy, the not waking up part is usually right after the seizures and coma. And best check it before ya wreck it, cause Jimson Weed is also an illegal drug in the USA- on that note there is all kinds of wacky info on the internet about taking it as a herbal medicine for various health probs such as asthma. Hmmm.

So here's a little word of mouth (oral tradition) about the J Weed that interests me the most- I was told there were studies done where people were administered the seeds of the plant in order to calculate reactions, hallucination, functions etc... this was done in a clinical setting. The people who participated in the study noticed something strange AFTER the whole tripping out narcotic thing was over, and that was they begin having reactions to all kinds of stuff, like prescription drugs and chemicals. Basically being poisoned by the plant caused chemical sensitivities in the participants. Wowsers. Kudos & Love to anyone who can find me some online info on these studies...

XoXo