My Little Bay Nut Project

Fresh Off the Neighbor's Lawn - Bay Nuts, originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.

At the Goddess Festival I saw a little bowl of roasted bay laurel nuts on one of the tables. Three for a quarter. I tried them and liked them--they are slightly bitter and are a mild stimulant. The woman who roasted them, Tamara Wilder, an amazing naturalist, told me about her website with instructions.
So a few days ago I was out for a walk with Eden and Zoe and just down the street a big bay tree had dropped all these nuts on the lawn. I got permission to pick them up and took home this bag full. I popped the nuts out of their mushy outer coating and let them dry overnight.
Turned out that really wasn't enough drying time, because some of them exploded in the oven! BANG!!
The website said to roast them in the shell, but didn't mention explosions. Or the thick cloud of acrid smoke that would set our smoke detector shrieking. Ugh.
I had to open doors and windows and fan the air with a towel. And the nuts still weren't roasted! I decided to shell them and try roasting them again the next morning.