How to Eat Acorns

"Can people eat acorns?" That's what my older son asked me while we were hiking through the woods.

"Definitely! People have been eating acorns for thousands of years" is what I said.

So my son picked one up from the forest floor, cracked it, took a bite, winced and spit it out "Blech!!!"

"Blech" is probably exactly what ancient humans said the first time they tried to eat them too. But humanity is undeterred when hunger is knocking on the door which is probably why people first started to eat things like fish that will kill you if it's prepared wrong, or oysters, or cilantro.

Raw acorns taste awful because of the naturally occurring tannic acid in most varieties. 

Not only is it horribly bitter, but it's not particularly healthy to eat.

The good news is, you can remove it by boiling the heck out of the acorn meat. It's helpful to know that acorns from a white oak(the longer skinnier acorns) have less tannin than acorns from a red oak (the fatter, rounder acorns), so they need a lot less boiling.

Here's One Way to Prepare Acorns for Eating

There's lots of ways. Here's a really basic one.

1. Gather acorns. Just go out into the woods with oak and pick them up off the forest floor in late summer, early fall. Select ones that don't have holes in them, which indicates there's probably a worm in there. And remember, try to go for the white oak acorns (the longer, thinner ones) because they'll require less boiling.

2. Remove the shells. This can take a while so settle in. Put on a movie or something. I use a nut cracker, which doesn't crack the acorns since they're kind of green. Instead it sort of squishes them in half. I peel it open and pull out the acorn meat...or nut...or whatever you want to call it.

Bowl of Acorn Nuts

3. Boil the acorns in a pot of water until the water turns reddish brown. That reddish brown color is the tannic acid.

Before Boiling

After Boiling

4. Strain off the water, refill the pot and boil the acorns again. And again. And again. And again. Until they taste completely bland. This can take quite a few water changes. Last batch I did took 12 water changes...they were red oak acorns though. This is why it's important to use white oak acorns. The less tannic acid you need to remove, the fewer water changes you'll need.

When the acorns are bland to taste, they're good to eat.

5. Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees

6. Put the bland acorns on a baking sheet and drizzle olive oil over them.

7. Roast those suckers until they're golden brown and a little crunchy...maybe 15 minutes. 

8. Salt to taste.

Now...some folks turn acorns into acorn FLOUR, which apparently can be used as a flour replacement.  I've never done that. Maybe some day I'll do it and post it here.

Fried Cabbage - a breakfast staple my six year old LOVES

Freshly picked cabbage from the garden.

Summer kicks my ass...or more specifically, it makes my ass grow big.  I'm a creature of the North who gets active between fall and spring. But in the summer I just sit there eating ice cream and sucking down cheap, cold beer and trying to keep from melting.

Fortunately, it's finally cabbage season. The cabbages are big and around, and the Cabbagemancer is back to making one of his favorite dishes: fried cabbage. I eat this stuff for breakfast several times a week. Its like a caramelize cabbage...a little sweet, a little salty and a little fat, it's filling, and its very low calorie. You can eat a huge mound of the stuff (about 4 cups) and only take in about 200 calories. 

Plus my six year old LOVES this stuff. He's been known to pass up french toast in favor of fried cabbage. Here he is shoveling it into his mouth.

Here's what you need:

• About 4 cups of shredded or thinly sliced cabbage. 

That's about four cups, right?

• 1 small onion cut into strips
• 1/2 tablespoon of butter
• Some water for splashing into the frying cabbage to help it steam
• Salt
• Pepper
• Frying pan with a lid and something to move the cabbage around with

Here's what you do:

1. Put everything into the frying pan:  your stack of cabbage, the onion, the butter (add more if you want, butter is good), a sprinkle or three of salt, and pepper to taste. I put a lot of pepper in. And maybe a quarter cup of water.

2. Cover the pan, turn the heat up to medium-high and just let that sucker sit there. 

3. Use a spatula or something to turn the stack of cabbage over every 3 or 4 minutes so as not to burn it. The idea is brown as much of the cabbage as possible. If it starts to burn or get dry, add some more water...about a quarter cup.

4. Keep the heat going until all the cabbage is soft and slightly caramelized. This takes about 15 minutes.

And that's it. I usually serve it on a plate with two eggs over easy and a LOT of hot sauce. Or for my son I make it with less pepper

Feel free to improvise and add other veggies, as well. Thin strips of turnips go really well with this and make it even sweeter. It also goes good with leeks, bell peppers, and of course jalapeños. 

Fermented Cucumber Pickles (and Coriander Sucks)

I tried my hand at fermented pickles a couple weeks ago. They're very easy. If you're lazy like me, they're the perfect lazy person's self-preserved food. You just cram some small cucumbers into a quart jar, cover them in brine, throw in some spices...boom boom boom. The friendly, completely harmless bacteria does all the work for you.

Here's what you do:

1. Get small cucumbers. Ones that will fit comfortably into a quart jar with enough room for at least three cucumbers. Farmer's markets have these. So does Walmart.
2. Sterilize some quart jars. You know...wash them then boil them for about 15 minutes. 
3. Cram cucumbers into the sterilized quart jars. Stuff as many of those suckers as you can into the jar, so long as it's below the lip of the jar.
4. Pour brine into the quart jars.  Brine is basically 3 tablespoons of pickling salt dissolved in 4 cups of water. Pour enough brine in to cover the cucumbers.
5. Toss in the spices. Dill. Mustard seed. Garlic. Whatever. Do what you want here. I made the horrible mistake of adding coriander seed to my last batch of pickles. Turns out coriander is cilantro. I swear to god I didn't know this. I HATE cilantro. Blech...who decided cilantro/coriander qualifies as food? YUCK!
6. Place the jar lid and the ring. I often rip off a jar sized piece of cabbage and put it over the pickles to hold them under the water before putting the jar lid on. 

And that's it. The initial stuff takes about 30 minutes, tops...most of which is sitting there waiting for water to boil to sterilize your jars. After step 6 just let those pickles sit there for two weeks and let the lactobacillus critters that hang around in the air turn the cucumbers into pickles. 

Burp the jars after a couple days......the process of fermentation produces CO2 which builds up in the jars. It's good to let some of that out to release pressure after about 48 hours.

Just remember....don't use coriander if you hate cilantro. In fact, cilantro should be banished from the world.

Within a few days of putting the cucumbers in the brine, they'll start to produce bubbles. After about 3 or 4 days the brine will get cloudy from the friendly bacteria....don't worry about that. After a couple weeks you'll have real, naturally fermented pickles.