Exposions, Bad Things, and Love

1 Explosion: Tried to roast Chestnuts after slicing Xs onto the flat sides to keep them from exploding. Now I have never roasted a chestnut, but I am pretty sure that mine definitely turned out wrong because they taste like raw, muddy, potatoes. Also, they exploded in the oven, and a few exploded in my kitchen (luckily I was terrified after the oven explosions so I opened the oven door, pulled out the oven rack and ran and hid for half an hour in another room). I am not 100% positive I had the right kind of chestnuts at all. I just need to try some profesionally made and then give this a second, less explosive, try.

1 Bad Thing: I love rustling about the Asian market looking for new foods and old favorites, so an old woman's insistance that candied lotus seeds were AMAZING gave me enough reasn to buy a bag. WHen I opened the bag, the smell was unpleasant, and when I ate the seed it first tasted like sugar and then like a rancid meat. I do not want to insult candied lotus seed lovers, but it was not my cup of tea. Is this how they are supposed to taste?

1 Love: I love making bread and my husband loves eating it, and it is fun. To compinsate for my initial lack of powdered milk, my first bread was a plain white bread that resembled a french bread in flavor. From what I understand, fats are interchangeable with one another and sugars are as well. So, oil became room temperature butter and sugar became honey, and man do I love this bread:
White Bread Love:
1 cup warm water
3 tablespoons room temp butter
3 cups of bread flour
3 tablespoons of honey
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 teaspoons Bread Machine Yeast

Add in the order that your bread machine calls for and bake on white bread, light crust, 1 1/2 pound loaf setting. We eat it hot out of the bread machine with a bit of butter or honey butter or jam or turkey, or whatever sounds good and is laying around. Delicious!