Eating Acorns

The day I found those Giant Puffballs we were actually out collecting acorns. My husband was interested in learning how to make them palatable since we have so many in this area. He is into trees the way I am into healing plants. 

The White Oak is the one to collect, they are naturally less bitter.

First we froze them, that made the skins come off easier. The skin is the layer just under the shell. My husband shelled them.

Next began the process of  making acorn flour. There are different ways to do that. First the bitter tannins must be removed. Some people boil the acorns multiple times until the water runs clear. We went with a non cooked method of leaching out those tannins. 

First we ground them up in the wet Vitamix. More water was added to them in a jar and this sat for 24 hours. Each 24 hours fresh water replaced the old until the water was clear.

Once the tannins were cleared out, we dehydrated the wet acorn meal. I have an Excaliber 4 tray. It came out really nice, nutty and tasty. (I snacked on some.) The grain was quite rough still, so we ground it to flour consistency in the dry Vitamix. It is came out very smooth, with a feel and look of cocoa powder.

My first test was on some cookies. Some GF friends were dropping by for tea. I grabbed everything that I had that was GF and went to work experimenting. 

I kept it simple, much like a shortbread: butter, sugar, vanilla, with cashew meal, acorn and oat flours. They were so good! Even the smallest of humans wanted more, which is really how I judge a "healthy" cookie.

Next was a recipe from the book Acorn Pancakes, Dandelion Salad, and 38 Other Wild Recipes. A simple classic, pancakes with butter and maple syrup. The acorn is so mild and nutty. It doesn't have that extra bitter taste that many of the darker grains have.

Yesterday's yummy breakfast. I had some leftover pancake batter. I waffled it and topped it with butter and smoked salmon. Again, it came out really good. 

Acorn flour is a winner!I love the idea of eating wild foods that man has not tampered with. Everything that fed that tree is now feeding me and my family. It is nutritionally excellent and it is extremely tasty and versatile. Oh, and the acorns were free!

Foraging the Giant Puffball

It's a good time for foraging here in NY. We have been getting lots of goodies. Just last week we scored a haul of Chicken of the Woods and Puffball mushrooms as well as white oak acorns and plantain (not the banana!). I needed to get more plantain before the frost to make my healing salves. My husband was after those acorns, he is going to make acorn flour out of them. If I don't eat them all first as a snack!

This is a lovely white Puffball Mushroom. I set those two brown ones in the background to show you what not to eat. A Puffball is good when it's all white, feels firm and a bit spongy. When they are brown they are past eating and have moved on to their spore making phase. They are quite large and easy to spot. I grabbed two this size, but left a larger one for the next human or animal forager.

You can see how easy the dirty outside peels right off. You should not eat this mushroom raw. In fact it's best to not eat any raw mushrooms.

I treated the first Puff like tofu, sauteed and seasoned with cajun spices. That's my default way of cooking and it's always tasty. But since I had so much of this mushroom I decided to experiment.

 This idea came to me while I was slicing it up. The slices really held their shape, which made me think of eggplant. Puffball parmigiana was born! 

Here you can see what the inside looks like, the texture was very good this way. There is no poison lookalike for this mushroom, so feel free to forage up some yourselves.

Sleepy Hollow Acorns

Looking for a little treat without calories or sugar? Try my little acorn cushions. I just finished a batch and FINALLY added a new item to my Etsy Shop. These spookies were actually gathered from the grave site of writer Washington Irving in Sleepy Hollow NY. 

This huge ancient oak towers over the other trees at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and just happens to be in the private family plot of Washington Irving. It showers the ground with these little shaggy capped acorns. 

Irving's grave is the one decorated with flags and pumpkins. Quite humble, not what one would expect from the writer of such stories as The Headless Horseman and Rip Van Winkle.

 I gathered my acorns on an overcast, drizzly October day. Noisy ravens perched on the tops of gravestones. It could not have been a more perfect day for my spooky task.

I was determined to stay until my basket was full even though it started raining. I did fill that basket and I ended up with a stow away.

My Spooky Acorns would make a nice addition to your Autumn nature display or could even be a stocking stuffer for those people on your Christmas list who enjoy the eerie all year round.

Foraging Fun: Chicken-of-the-Woods

We went out looking for tree nuts and ended up instead with this lovely Chicken-of-the-Woods mushroom. My husband was the one to spot it, as I tramped right over it! It is also called Sulpher Shelf and it is a favorite foraged mushroom because not only is it very nice to eat, but there are no poison lookalikes. Some folks say it really doesn't taste like chicken, I think it does. The texture is very much like chicken breast. Like tofu it will become whatever you flavor it to be. Really, if you didn't know this was a mushroom, wouldn't you think this sliced up bit is cooked chicken breast? The black and white feather is turkey, found near the mushroom.

Chicken-of-the-Woods grows on trees, logs and roots. Bring a sharp knife, you'll have to slice it off. Look at this color! We found two this size, but some bunches can be huge. It you are lucky enough to come across a giant clump you should cook it at once if you won't be able to eat it all within a couple of days. After it's cooked, freeze it and throw it into soups and stews, rice dishes, casseroles or pasta as you want it. You can also dry it out to store it, but it requires more fat to cook it in to rehydrate. 

The underside ranges from light yellow to white. They are best eaten when they are young and tender. When they get big they are hard and woody. In that case I would just trim off the very tips to eat.

You can bake it, braise it or as I did here, saute it. Since finding this Chicken-of-the-Woods was a surprise treat I had to fit it into my already planned lunch, curried pumpkin soup. We came home from our foraging walk hungry. As the soup was heating up I sauteed the mushroom. Very tasty, like crispy bits of fried chicken.

You will find these mushrooms growing in shady woods and sunny city parks. We found ours on the grounds of Sunnyside, Washington Irving's home. As I've said, there are no poison lookalikes for Chicken-of-the-Woods, so if you are new to mushroom hunting, this is a good one to start with.

Berries are Back!

The berries are back. I've posted before about my compulsion to pick. It seems like every time we go for a nature walk these days we end up stuck (literally!) picking berries. Blackberries and wild raspberries are ready to go right now. We get all scratched up and sticky. We battle thorns, poison ivy and spider webs. We need tick checks when we get home (we have lots of nasty ticks here). But we still go into the thickets because it's fun and the reward of wild berries is worth it.

We were lucky to find a running stream to wash off our very sticky hands.

I have been making a lot of berry crumbles, the days have been fairly cool for this time of year and I'm in the mood to bake. I use oats, coconut sugar, butter and whatever flour I happen to grind up. I keep coconut, wheat berries, and other grains in the freezer to make into quick flours in the Vitamix.

Yummy berry scones for tea.

 I am out of berries, so we will be off and picking again later this week. I am always on the lookout for more yummy berry recipe ideas, so if you have any please do share!