Eating Acorns

Oh man, the acorns workshop was awesome! And that bread? Holy moly. SO GOOD.

Courtney showed us the quickest and easiest way to make acorn flour, but there are a few different ways it can be done. 

The acorn nuts are quite bitter to begin with (I tried them to verify ;) so it's necessary to rinse them to get the tannins out.

(Cool fact: Tannins - from aging in oak barrels - give red wine a lot of their flavour!)

Before acorns are edible, the bitter tannins must be eliminated. For some oaks (English, chestnut oak) the tannins are minimal and peeling off the outer skin and lightly roasting the whole kernels will do. Most acorns need a water leaching to become edible. Boiling whole or lightly chopped kernels in several changes of water over several hours is one way. This makes a very dark nut with loss of sugar, and changed starch making it less useful for thickening. But the whole kernels can be eaten as is or added to granola or trail mix. Soaking whole or chopped kernels in fresh cold water is another way. This was traditionally done in a pit, or in a basket in a stream over several weeks. This washes out the tannins, leaving the sugars and starches and results in a pale nut which can be ground and used as flour or eaten as is. This cold processed flour is an excellent thickener, and makes good porridge.

The Fast Method:

The fast method results in a slightly poorer quality flour (less sugar and starch) than the boiling or cold water leaching process, but it’s super fast and easy. Having the modern convenience of wheat flour, corn or potato starch, and lots of sweeteners at hand the lack of the natural sugars and starches will not be missed when baking with acorn flour made this way!

Shell the acorns and discard any kernels that are discoloured. The nuts should be creamy white or pale beige. Cut off any black, grey, yellow or brown parts. 

Put 1 or 2 cups of kernels into a blender with lots of water. Blend to a fine paste, you want particles the size of cracked wheat or even cornmeal. The water will turn milky white, this is the starch coming out of the nuts. 

Pour the slurry into a clean nylon stocking. You want a fairly thick weave, not a sheer stocking. Let drain, and then wash the stocking full of nut meal under cold water, kneading the nut meal inside until the water runs clear and no more white starch comes out. The starch is easier to see than the tannin, so we use the absence of starch as a clue to when we have sufficiently washed the nuts.

 

Spread the nut meal out on a stocking or fabric covered dehydrator tray, or a fine mesh screen. Dry at a fairly high temperature for 6 to 10 hours, stirring and breaking up lumps occasionally. The oven can also be used, 15 – 20 minutes at 150 – 200F then leave the door ajar for several hours, stir, give it another 10 minutes at low heat until dry.

When completely dry, sift or run the meal through a food mill to even out the texture. Enjoy! 

When cooking with this acorn flour, use it in place of cornmeal in bread, cake or muffin recipes. It can also be used instead of almond or walnut meal. Use it with wheat flour for best texture, and add a spoonful of extra sugar and starch if you find the texture too heavy. This does not make good porridge, but is wonderful added to muffins and cookies.

References:
This is from the blog of an awesome Serbian guy. Lots of good info and crazy speculation. 

Acorn Bread Recipe

1 1/4 cup acorn meal
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 egg
1 3/4 cup milk (I used coconut milk, any milk will do, homo or buttermilk make it extra rich)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (omit if using buttermilk)
4 tablespoons butter or margarine (coconut oil ok)

preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

combine dry ingredients in large bowl, stir well. 

add wet ingredients except butter. stir into a smooth batter.

put butter into large skillet (12 inches or so) and put into oven to heat up. butter should melt and be very hot, just below smoke point.

pour batter into the hot butter filled skillet and put into oven.

reduce temperature to 375F or 400F.

bake for 30 minutes, until bread sets in centre and pulls away from the side of the pan.

serve warm!

Upcoming Workshop: D&D for Beginners

This Friday, October 23rd at 6:30 pm, we're holding our first D&D workshop! 

Do you like playing video games and watching TV shows like Game of Thrones? With D&D you and your friends can play as the heroes in your own story and world.


This session is meant to be an introduction to the 5th edition of D&D, which is the latest version and has been streamlined from previous editions and actually quite simple to pick up and play.

For this session I will not be focusing on character creations, instead I will be focusing on actual play. I will allow people to bring custom characters if they feel like reading the quick start rules and using a character sheet.


Quick start rules: http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/playerdndbasicrules_v0.2.pdf


My favorite character sheet (requires excel): http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?s=b46f26157d09df512d3df71f42415b06&do=download&downloadid=1234


If you don’t have time this week to do so, that is perfectly fine! I will be printing out standard character sheets this week before the session. You’ll still be able to give them their own personality, the limit is only your imagination.




RSVP on our Facebook page, or email harmonyhomeslice@gmail.com

Making Clouds

I did a really cool craft project recently. I made clouds! 

I saw this idea online a year or two ago (the post can be found here), but just finally got around to trying it myself. I hadn't paper mached since elementary school, so there was a bit of a learning curve... and the post that inspired me was (IMO) a little sketchy on the details, so I'm including my advice for this project. I made two clouds, and learned from the first one. 

- Put down a tarp. I literally covered our studio in tarp and I'm so glad I did. This was messy. Wear clothes you're okay with getting paste all over. 

- I don't think the colour of the balloons really matters. They say to use white, but you're not going to see them anyways.

- For the paper mache paste, I just used flour and water, and made it slightly thinner than pancake mix. 

- I started out making my newspaper bits too small. I found about 4" x 8" to be about the ideal size, and ripped smaller bits when needed. In the end I realized I was spending too much time trying to make it look pretty, when it's not even visible in the finished product.

- I only put paste on one side of the newspaper, and less paste than you'd think. I ended up just slopping it on with my hands, though you could use a wide brush if you wanted. I used too much paste on the first one and it just took WAY longer to dry.

- It seems like two layers of paper mache is ideal. You don't want your clouds to come out too heavy, but you also don't want them to collapse. I waited about 4 hours between coats of paper mache, then about 16 hours until I started adding fluff. 

- I used two different types of paper (the first, Canadian Tire ads, the second, The National Post) to cover my balloons. It made it easy to tell where I'd already covered on the second pass. 

- They say to use spray glue, and although I think you could get away without it, I'd seriously recommend it. I think it went way faster this way, and the stuff dries fairly quickly so you don't have to hold it in place for long. It also makes it easier to fill in gaps - just spray the gap, and stick fluff on, without having to clear a space to affix it directly to the paper mache. 

In all, I'm so pleased with how they turned out - it was more time consuming and sitting on the floor than I anticipated, but totally worth it in the end. I'm slightly concerned that they're going to be magnets for dust and allergens, however. We'll see. Maybe I'll vacuum them?  

Upcoming Workshop - How to Eat Acorns

Hello Friends!! 

I am very excited to announce that in October, Courtney will be hosting a workshop on how to eat acorns! 

Details of the workshop will be announced shortly, but in the meantime, it's acorn-gathering season! Here's a note from Courtney with some acorn gathering tips! 

find your oak trees. there are only a few oaks common in toronto, and all oaks produce potentially edible acorns. the different species of oak vary in size of acorn, and in levels of tannins in the nuts. the tannins are the bitter compounds that mean you can't just crack an acorn open and eat it like you can a walnut. we'll talk about how to remove the tannins on the day, but basically you wash them out of the nuts with water in various ways. there are kinds of acorns that you can eat straight off the tree but they aren't growing around here anywhere.
we can divide the local oaks into two broad categories, oaks with rounded leaves and oaks with pointy leaves. round leaf oaks are english oak, burr oak, and white oak. these have the sweetest acorns. they have acorns that have small hats and long nuts. english oaks often have very skinny almost columnar appearance, and are planted next to houses and buildings. some can be found on u of t campus, one is at the corner of harbord and spadina in front of the athletic centre. they have small rounded leaves. white oaks are big trees, sprawling in shape and they have larger leaves. burr oak have been planted in toronto by the city in the last 10 years, many are not large enough to produce many acorns yet. they have very big mitteny leaves, corky bark and gnarly twigs, and acorns with bristly hats. acorns from round leaf oaks will be very hard to find, because they are so delicious. squirrels, bluejays, raccoons and other wildlife will probably eat them all before you get there. 
the pointy leaf oaks you'll have more luck with. the black, red, and pin oaks all have pointy leaves, and big sprawing shapes, with crooked branches. pin oaks make extremely tiny acorns, so they are not worth harvesting. black and red oaks make very large acorns, round with big hats. these are less popular with the animals until frost and fall rainstorms have washed them and made them sweeter. go for these! they are often in parks north of davenport in the west end of the city. 

gather acorns:
ideally, you want acorns that have just fallen to the ground, with brown shells and no hats, or very loose hats. these are the ripest and best. gather acorns from the ground by raking, or put down a tarp and wait a couple days. i like gathering from areas where you know there won't be weeks old acorns (acorns on ground get infested with ants, worms and fungus) driveways, decks, and well maintained lawns are ideal. choose acorns with no visible holes, and discard acorns with bites out of them, cracked shells, or attached hats. wash and air-dry, and save them in a cool dry place until october 19!
email me with any questions. courtneyjanetlake@gmail.com

Top left - Pin Oak with tiny acorns!

Right - Black and Red Oak 


Bottom - English Oak