I’ve been collecting acorns for the last two autumns, mainly to feed my squirrels. When they are full of acorns and fat and sassy, they don’t try to empty my bird feeders.
Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about these nuts. Did you know that some oaks bear acorns so low in bitter tannins that they can be eaten raw? One mature Valley Oak can drop 2,000 pounds of acorns in a really good year. We have no oak trees on our property so I have to depend on friends who do, and who consider the acorns a big headache in the fall.
Other than eating the sweet ones raw (or feeding squirrels), there are other things you can do with the mighty acorn. Several cultures roast and salt acorns and serve them like roasted chestnuts.
Did you know that their innards are a carbohydrate (starch) and you can make flour with them? Turns out the acorn-eatingest people in the world right now are the Koreans. If you go to a good Asian market, there is a good chance you will find acorn flour and acorn noodles, which look just like soba noodles. From what I can tell the noodles are eaten in the same way soba noodles are; and yes, they also appear to a lesser extent in Japanese cuisine. Berbers will sometimes make couscous from acorn flour, and Italians make acorn flour pasta, too
Acorns, which are, for the most part, bitter and need to be water-leached at least once or twice to be palatable. They lack gluten, and acorn cooks up dark, because of the sugars in them.
The acorn may have been one of the earliest foods. From a blog comment (a person named Claire) I learned the following: “I am reading about the Druids and they think the word is cognate with the Greek “drus”, meaning “an oak”, and “wid” meaning “to know” or “to see”. My book says “The origin of the Druid caste has had its root in the ‘food gathering age’ when extensive oak forests covered Europe. We are speaking of a period prior to 4000 BC when primitive hunter gatherers saw the oak as a symbol of plenty, collecting acorns as a means of food and finding them easy to store for more difficult days….According to Pliny, the acorn was ground and baked into bread. Publius Ovidius Naso, the poet Ovid, speaks of the acorn as the first food ever given to humans when they were dropped from the great tree of the sky-god Jove or Jupiter. Strabo speaks of acorn bread as a staple diet of the Celts of Iberia, while the Leabhar na Nuachonghbala, composed about AD 1150, records that in one particular bad year every ear of corn bore but one grain and every oak only one acorn, which indicates that the acorn was still regarded as an article of food classed with grain by the Irish.”
I’d love to try an acorn recipe – maybe a tortilla with acorn flour? – but it would deprive my squirrels of food this winter.
RED OAK
In the new forest where I grew up the local farmers had the right to release their pigs to roam and eat the acorns as they were poisonous to the wild new forest ponies. It was an ancient right called Pannage.
Wow, something new! The pigs must have loved them. Not sure if any of the oaks in New England had edible acorns – haven’t found anything about the Pilgrims eating them…yet.
In the new forest where I grew up the local farmers had the right to release their pigs to roam and eat the acorns as they were poisonous to the wild new forest ponies. It was an ancient right called Pannage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannage
I didn’t know you could eat acorns – I always thought they were just for the critters! I wonder how they would be in an acorn pie!
Actually I found a recipe for an acorn cake that looked very tasty. You could use the acorn flour for the crust, thought!
We had our big oak tree taken down so I believe our tree produced 2000 pounds of acorns. It was a pain!
Not if you were an Indian! Until they become agriculturalists, they didn’t have a source of starch except for acorn flour.
Fascinating facts about acorns, Noelle… The squirrels and birds in you neighborhood are truly blessed.. Wishing you all a beautiful and blessed Thanksgiving!
Hope yours is delicious and wonderful, Bette. I am making my great-great grandmother’s meat stuffing today!
Fascinating, thanks Noelle – and Happy Thanksgiving! I notice in the photograph you give that most of the acorns have a little hole in them. Is there perhaps a bug lurking in the depths of each acorn?
Yes, there are little wigglies inside but the squirrels don’t seem to mind!
Oh – it would be like finding a caterpillar in the salad!
That looks like quite a sciurine feast there…. at least enough to keep them busy for a week or so!
My oak was producing acorns every other year for a while… 09, 11, 13… then I got them again in 2014, and every year since then has been few to none. I’m just glad I don’t have a walnut tree, because those things might go through a roof when they fall!
OOOO, walnuts! But the squirrels might take care of that. Our oaks up at the lake dropped a ton of acorns about four years ago, but not much since. Must be the weather..
We have a family of six squirrels in our garden – mum, dad, and five little’uns. We bought a pumpkin a month ago, cut out the yucky stuff and filled it with monkey nuts. Needless to say, the squirrels kept away from our bird feeders, for a short while.
Sorry, can’t count. That should be four little’uns 🙂
How nice that you thought of your squirrels! Our population has been thinned by coyotes so I feel a need to make sure they have enough to eat without traveling too far!