Why we don't eat acorn

The difference between rolling up the hammock for the end of the season here and in NC is pine needles. Back home, pine needles were a barely noticed, ubiquitous part of our lives. If I was reading outside, it was easy to pick one up to use as a bookmark. I lined the trails with them each spring, but other than that, they snuck into our lives, barely noted, ending up on the floor and in the cars. Each winter, when I rolled up the hammock, there were always pine needles rolled up with it.

It's growing cold, and I rolled up the hammock today, complete with the dried leaves of the hardwood trees it hangs from. In central NC, if you leave a field or a lawn untended, within a year, you have the beginning of a loblolly pine forest. Here, we have some cedars in the woods, but other than that, it's all field grasses or hardwoods.

There are black walnuts, hickory and oaks, among others. I have always liked the idea of foraging. Farming and gardening often involves fighting nature: keeping birds from eating the blueberries and tomatoes, fending off the bean beetles, fencing off the beds from rabbits. Deer will sometimes chomp the whole plants. So if you can eat what is naturally there, your food defends itself.

Thus, I tried cooking acorns. Processing acorns is pretty easy. You let them dry for a few days, crack them open with a nutcracker, and drop the nuts in boiling water. Turn the water off and let it sit for a half hour. Rinse, repeat. It may take 3 or 4 water baths to get the bitterness out, but it's not like you need to sit there with it. So it's pretty effortless.

They're kind of dry and chewy. I've seen recipes where they are ground up and hidden in things like pancakes or muffins. I still have some left, and I might try that. I sugar glazed them and salted them, but I don't recommend it. They are much easier to crack than walnuts, but they don't taste nearly as good.

Which is why we humans leave them to the squirrels.