Posted By jim on October 26, 2009

Last year in the Mid-Atlantic region there was a lot of discussion about the lack of acorns. Some oak trees, it seemed from some accounts, produced no acorns at all (this may be the oak trees evolutionary way of keeping the squirrel population at a sustainable level). This year was a different story: there was plenty for everybody. The squirrels had so many this year that they hardly complained when my son and I gathered a mess of ‘em and left the rest to compost naturally. So now what to do with them? Acorns take a lot of labor to prepare but they remind me a bit of wheat. I mean in their ability to serve as a staple food. Listen:

California Indians did not have to be farmers, and for the most part were hunters and gatherers. There was a ready supply of deer, fish, rabbits, fowl, native plants for vegetables, native fruits, and even seaweed. Even so, acorns are said to have been the main food of as many as 3/4 of our native Californians. Acorns were everywhere, are easy to gather and store fairly well … as long as your storage places are squirrel tight. Some groups buried baskets of nuts until they were needed.@ Siouxme.com.

I can believe that when I see so many acorns in a suburban landscape that has many fewer oak trees than it once did.
But as I was saying using acorn is a labor intensive job: it helps to have a village. Barring that, here are some techniques I found helpful to getting acorns.
1. Enlist the aid of kids. They love gathering them.
2. Use something heavy to crack them. I used a sledge hammer. We put some down on the sidewalk and I picked up the sledge hammer and dropped it on them. Imagine the early Indians (sorry, after listening to Sherman Alexie I can’t say Native American or Indigenous people with a straight face anymore) using a large wooden mortar and pestle. Once you’ve cracked them you have to take the shell off. This takes tough nails.
3. Once you have separated the meat from the shells acorns need to be leached in water. You can read how this was traditionally done at Sioux Me. I boiled the water a couple of times but then used several changes of cold water.
4. I put the meats on aluminum foil and dried them on our grill after cooking a meal (hey I’m a utopian economist, right).
5. Final step, I used an electric grinder to make acorn flour. It is slow going in my little grinder but you don’t need much. I can see where two or three people working together with a large stone or wooden pestle could do a better job. Acorns don’t have any gluten which means the flour won’t stick together like wheat does, you can use it like corn meal in your conventional recipes.
For a fantastic taste experience try this Acorn Cake recipe. I highly recommend it but heed the warning on cook time. When acorns are abundant, you get a real sense of why the Earth becomes the subject of worship and adoration in many cultures. Enjoy the abundance!

Categories: DIY Community & Mutual Aid, DIY Food, Food, Utopian Economics
Tags: acorn flour, acorns, DIY Foo