Growing up in the 80s, we didn’t do much of “out of hand eating apples” because my parents didn’t like most apples that were available in the grocery stores Las Cruces. Mostly, it was as apple wedges with honey in Temple if anything. There was an exception though, about once a season my father had his friends back in MASS send a crate (the term he used, basically a hard cardboard box with individual internal wells) of 24 McIntosh apples to us in southern NM. He’d generally lived his life in the Northeastern US, and they were the only out-of-hand-eating apples he liked. My brother and I would normally get a couple, but the rest were binged by my father in relatively short order, as they were only at their peak for a few weeks.
I tried the Costco ones also which were my first try of a chestnut–they were repulsive and I suspected that they’d gone spoiled, but Mrs G insisted that they were supposed to taste that way. I don’t get the appeal, and it very well could be a chemical/genetic/cilantro thing.
More likely Stockholm Syndrome
In my (mixed US/UK) household Chestnuts are the reverse-root beer. Something you had to have growing up to enjoy. My wife loves them but I loathe the things as much as she does the taste of root beer.
Yeah, I usually have mine that way, and I coat the skin with olive oil and salt too. If you’re using the oven in your kitchen. that’s how to go. But I also say that potatoes allowed to bake in the embers of a campfire are wonderful. You have to brush off the ash, of course, but the charred skin and the sweet, smokey inside are lovely. Sprinkle on a little salt if you want, but I don’t think it’s even needed.
De gustibus non est disputandum. Or, as the Russians say, Na vkus i na tsvet, tovarishchey nyet.