Nom nom nom nom
If you live in New York State or the Northeast, October is the best month, hands down. The beautiful fall foliage is in full swing, AppleFest happened, there is pumpkin flavored coffee/bread/muffins/pie deliciousness all over town, if you are in high school it's fall sports season and homecoming time... Christmas may be the most wonderful, but autumn is clearly the best time of year.
Eric Steinman of care2.com describes my trials and tribulations of every day life exactly: "Tis’ the season to slip and fall on thousands of discarded acorns and their hard, leathery shells. I say this because, it is fall here in the North East and acorns are abundant and raining from the sky, and because I have nearly chipped a tooth on my many trips to ground due to the plentitude of these acorns. My neighborhood squirrels, along with the few birds that are able to plunder their share from my towering oak trees, are just bonkers for acorns, and they have turned my house, and surrounding yard, into a compost heap of acorn detritus. It isn’t pretty, and this acorn debris is as unpleasant to look at, as it is difficult to clean up. Which got me thinking: why should rodents and visiting birds be the only one’s enjoying the bounty from above. Why can’t I eat acorns?"
Eric Steinman of care2.com describes my trials and tribulations of every day life exactly: "Tis’ the season to slip and fall on thousands of discarded acorns and their hard, leathery shells. I say this because, it is fall here in the North East and acorns are abundant and raining from the sky, and because I have nearly chipped a tooth on my many trips to ground due to the plentitude of these acorns. My neighborhood squirrels, along with the few birds that are able to plunder their share from my towering oak trees, are just bonkers for acorns, and they have turned my house, and surrounding yard, into a compost heap of acorn detritus. It isn’t pretty, and this acorn debris is as unpleasant to look at, as it is difficult to clean up. Which got me thinking: why should rodents and visiting birds be the only one’s enjoying the bounty from above. Why can’t I eat acorns?"
This led me over to the NY Times article, What the Squirrels Know: Acorns for Dinner, which presents that you can, in fact, eat acorns in a variety of forms. I'm intrigued.
Thanks to some potentially toxic, not to mention disgusting, tannins, acorns are not to be consumed in their natural form. I recognize tannins from the stuff released by tea after you let the tea bag steep too long - they make it bitter (and gross.)
Low and behold, you can whip up a plethora of foodstuffs with acorns. Well, ok, like 5 things. Let's discuss 2. First, Acorn Flour
which isn't the easiest thing to make yourself. Luckily for everyone, it is basically the exact same process as making, something that I might even consider trying someday (maybe), a German favorite, drumroll...Acorn Coffee!
The chef over at honest-food.net, also the guy who took the above picture, writes, "Oh I know what you’re thinking: They’re poisonous. Intolerably bitter. Flavorless. Too much work to shell. Too much work to process. Not worth the effort. Mealy. None of this is really true, unless pre-packaged meals are your idea of a grand dinner." He explains that this coffee tastes a bit more like tea than it does a dark roast, but hey, it sure is cheaper to use what falls from the trees right here than buying coffee.
He does, however, expand on the bean collecting process, "Back in October I’d gathered a big sack full with my friend Elise at a park near my house. I’d left them lying around for a while, and when I got around to shelling them found out that many acorns harbor a nasty little maggoty thing that is the larva of the oak weevil. I got rid of all the infected acorns and shelled them with a hammer."
Ok, ok, you had me at "maggoty." Gross. Perhaps worth trying....... someday. After the nut is finally released from its shell, the next step is boiling all of the acorns to rid them of their evil tannins. He does mention changing the water 5 times, which apparently "isn't bad for acorns." Cooking with acorns getting less appealing. Then he bakes them at 325 for a while, and grinds them into a flour paste, and from there on out generally makes it the way you'd make regular coffee. In a french press!
While it does have me interested because it's mad cheap to use what falls on my house from the trees above, I still really don't feel to good about voluntarily dealing with anything remotely maggoty. Coffee isn't that expensive.
What do you think, vast audience of readers? I think I am a no. But I'm open to being proven wrong... or being told not to knock it until I try it and then not trying it. There has got to be another handicraft that can work with this that doesn't involve dealing with worms.
What do you think, vast audience of readers? I think I am a no. But I'm open to being proven wrong... or being told not to knock it until I try it and then not trying it. There has got to be another handicraft that can work with this that doesn't involve dealing with worms.
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