It may be in the 50's outside, but...dang! After getting use to the warmer weather, it feels like its freezing! No one is in the mood to do much of anything. So, I've been using Mother's Day to put together a bunch of posts (see below).
No, I'm not slacking....I AM the mom, so these people should be waiting on me and foot today....lol!
Acorns are the nuts of the oak tree. Acorns are an important forage food for many animals (and humans)...in fact, pigs use to be pastured under oak trees to fatten them up without any problems. However, in large amounts, acorns are not good for horses, cattle, goats, and sheep...and yes, even humans.... due to the high amount of tannin in them, possibly causing liver damage. Despite being bad for them, though, these animals will actually crave acorns. (You will need to process acorns for them as you would for yourself).
I'll warn you....its an awful lot of work, but in a survival situation, it beats starving.
However, despite all of this, acorns were once considered an important food to humans, and still is some cultures. Koreans even make acorn jelly and acorn noodles. The Japanese once used them to make acorn cakes. They were also an important food to the native Americans, especially in California. Some even claim that the ancient Celts made a cookie-like yeast bread out of them, but that information is suspect to me.
Avoid any acorn that has a damaged shell or a dark hole...these will have worms in them (unless you like that sort of thing). White oak acorns are notably low on tannin, and require little if any processing...but that makes it a preferred food, and thus white oaks are few and far between. Everybody seems to have a different method of processing them.
Today's California native Americans gather black oak acorns that have dropped on the ground and will fill any container (even an entire room) with them. They then stir them at least a couple of times a week. (The lady who's aunt kept a room full of them said that they would send a child or two into the room to do the "stirring", not unlike playing in a ball pit, because bigger people would crack the shells. I am told they let them dry for an entire year before using them! Of course, we modern people don't have that great of patience, and emergency measures are often immediate. European Americans tend to shell and dry the nut...a lot of work...while others find that the shells of some varieties will crack and split open if heat dried.
Before you use them, you need to crush them and soak the pieces to remove the tannin. Change the water constantly until it no longer turns brown (which is the tannin). However, others have observed that this can often take weeks of daily water replacing. Other people recommend boiling the crushed acorns for several hours (changing the water once it turns brown) to quickly leach the tannin, but some people believe this might actually "fix" the tannin within the nut. One person claimed that only transferring from boiling water to cold water causes this, and thus you should always switch the nuts from one pot of boiling water to another pot of boiling water. Use your own judgment and taste buds for this.
A third method is to grind them and turn them into mush. Drape a cotton cloth over a deep bowl, pour in the acorn mush, and rinse it with warm (not boiling) water. Bring the corners of the cloth together and wring it out. The native Californians used a method similar to this, using mildly running water for several to leach the tannin out. The cloth method is a modern version of this.
No matter which method you use, test the acorn, pieces, or mush...if it is bitter tasting, it still has tannin in it. If it is sweet, the tannin is gone.
Once it is no longer bitter, allow the mush or pieces to dry out. It can be used like a nut, or finely ground and turned into flour.
The native Americans would turn it into a porridge or soup, usually cooked using hot rocks inside of the cooking pot (which was often a wood basket, not metallic, so it couldn't be used directly over a fire). When Europeans arrived, they used a method similar to that of Korea...they would mix it 50/50 with another grain, like wheat flour or oatmeal, and then cooked into pancakes or breads. Acorn flour is too heavy by itself to be used as the sole flour, and the bread will fall apart.
But wait! Don't toss out that tannin water just yet! Tannin water has been used as a skin wash for rashes, skin irritations, burns, poison ivy, and cuts. It has been gargled for sore throats. It has been used to tan hides. I've even read that it can be used to wash clothes, although I wouldn't recommend it for white clothing (the tannin would turn them a light tan).
As I said, its a lot of work. However, if you are desperate for a food source, then you are desperate for a food source. And many property owners that also have oaks tend to have no problem with you picking up acorns from the ground, as these things become big, fat bullets when caught up by a lawn mower!
And doesn't it suck that I have put in the following to keep myself from being hunted and hung by the FDA?
Any medicinal-sounding writing in this post is purely for entertainment and informational purposes only. We are not doctors, do not play one on television, and give out no medical advice.
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