I just read the article regarding roasting chestnuts. My childhood memories flooded back as I read it. My mother was British and came to the US after WW2 and met my father and they married. We grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains of CA. Each Christmas she would purchase chestnuts and make chestnut stuffing for our Christmas turkey (Maybe on occasion for our Thanksgiving turkey as well), as she had done as a tradition "back home".

She always kept a few which we would roast over our fireplace as she had done as a child in England as well. This would have been mostly during the 1960s, and I have no idea which type of chestnuts she would purchase, but I do know she would find them at the local grocery store. I can recall her commenting from time to time about the cost of them, so it was a small holiday treat we usually only had once a year.