Echoes in stone

I recently visited a vineyard customer west of Paso Robles.  As I walked up to their winery building I just about fainted when I saw a shelf mounted on the outside to display these: 

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And these:

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… a collection of native American – probably Chumash – mortars and pestles used for grinding acorns.  The vineyard owner told me they had been found on the property by the guy she bought the vineyard from years ago.  Best of all:  I’m welcome on the property to hunt for more mortars! Ahem, ahem... I think I feel a cough coming on that will require me to miss a couple of days of work next week!  I'd give one of my less important limbs to find one of these, in working order.  Especially with acorn drop almost upon us.

I love wine.  I love the vineyard industry. I love art and science of combining soil and sun to produce a liquid with magical, complex properties.  I deeply admire the people who perform this alchemy both in the vineyard and in the winery.  And – if I’m being candid – I love the way sales of grow tubes and bird netting to vineyards puts food on my family’s table.

But these mortars & pestles are a simple reminder of another, much more life sustaining, crop once produced, harvested and processed on this property - and of a different alchemy, that of turning an astringent, tannin filled nut into a delicious meal rich in nutriment (I love that old fashioned word!), an alchemy that required only water, stone and time.  If you listen hard you can still hear the echoes of the thump, thump, grind of pestle striking mortar, turning acorns into meal, turning sunlight and soil into another year’s sustenance for the People.  And the laughter and song of the People as they worked.

Two great tastes that taste great together...

 ... acorns and pizza.

Actually this photo (apologies for the sickly lighting...) combines four of my favorite things:  Christmas, acorns, pizza and oak wood.

It is tree decorating night at Casa de Siems.  That means music, food and memories.  No, our Christmas tree is not an oak.  Although I lobbied for that.  Again.  And lost.  Again.

By food, I mean pizza.  And pizza at our house means homemade crust with 1 cup of the white flour replaced with acorn flour.  We pre-bake the crust, then add the toppings (after much heated debate) and bake for another 6-7 minutes or so.  The only downside of acorn flour pizza crust is that it's much more filling and satisfying than regular crust... which sounds all well and good until you consider the horrible consequences of that:  It means eating less pizza!

My other favorite thing is the oak table upon which the pizza crust is resting.  Sickly lighting aside this is our one truly prized possession - a quarter-sawn white oak table made in Lake City, Minnesota in 1900.  We found it at an antique store in suburban Minneapolis about eight years ago.  We went in looking for a couple of small wall decorations.  We walked out with a 2-ton (estimated weight, based on having moved it several times) of gorgeous oak.  It's a circular table about 52 inches in diameter with leaves that expand it to nearly 100 inches in length, and with five massive columnar legs.

Update:  I didn't get this posted yesterday afternoon, so the trimming of the tree has come and gone.  Summary:  Tree... gorgeous.  Snacks... plentiful.  Music... excellent (avoiding the putrid Paul McCartney Christmas ditty "Wonderful Christmas Time" helped in that; honestly, what was Sir Paul thinking??).  Pizza... delicious.

I'm still full.

This is awesome: A new Oak Watch hero!

I spend a lot of time in my truck visiting customers.  I generally click back and forth between sports talk radio (even though I can’t remember the last time I watched an entire non-Olympic sporting event on TV) and public radio.  It’s a sort of intellectual whiplash, going from endless, cliché-ridden discussions on whether players of a barbaric sport should be fined or suspended for openly discussing and rewarding barbarism and other pressing topics of the day, to in-depth discussions of issues of minor importance like health care, terrorism, current and pending economic meltdowns, etc.

Yesterday I was smart/lucky/annoyed enough to switch away from the 1,892,732^nd discussion and analysis of the most overrated backup quarterback in the history of football in time to hear the single most important story in the history of public radio:  A 15 minute story on my local Central Coast CA public radio station about a very cool woman in nearby Atascadero who every autumn gathers, processes and bakes acorns.  When asked why she goes to the trouble to do this every year, Cathie Asdel said (and I'm paraphrasing in the manner of someone taking notes while driving 65 miles an hour on a curving highway) "If everything we eat is pre-packaged, how important are we?"  Cathie gathers, processing, bakes and eats acorns to regain a sense of connection with the Earth.  She said, "We need to love and use the things in our environment in order to appreciate them."

I hope to meet Cathie very soon.

The story was on KCBX radio.  Yesterday they had a link to some (typewritten - I love it!) instructions from Cathie on making acorn meal and a few recipes.  I no longer see it on the KCBX web site, but luckily I clicked the link last night.

Here it is.  Enjoy.

Perhaps it would behoove me to spend a little less time listening to inane sports chatter and a little more time listening to public radio.  Then again, listening to inane chatter has its advantages.  Years ago a hugely popular Minneapolis morning drive radio show was making fun of a guy who, according to some article or other, carried a horse chestnut in his pocket for good luck.  The hosts assumed that a horse chestnut was the equine equivalent of a cow pie, and therefore thought this story was ha-ha hilarious.  In those pre-email/twitter/facebook days (God, those were the days!) I sent a fax blasting their stupidity.  They read my fax on the air and soundly blasted me for being such a spoil sport tree dweeb.  But since they read my letter on the air I also won free tickets to see Jeff Foxworthy.  Not bad!

I wonder what they'd say about a guy who often carries acorns in his pocket - not so much for luck but as a reminder of what's important.

Gamekeepers: Deer Eat Better Than We Do

The good folks at Mossy Oak publish a magazine called Gamekeepers.  It must have been a proverbial "slow news day," because for some reason I am sure they will come to regret they published an article written by me.

I have written before about how a growing number of hunters truly have it right, and are providing food for wildlife in a way that is much more efficient and sustainable than the myriad ways in which we feed ourselves: They are planting permanent "food plots" of nut- and fruit-bearing trees.  They are also much more diligent and careful than most landscape or timber tree planters when it comes to protecting and tending their young trees in order to achieve optimal growth.  In short, hunters planting oaks for deer and turkey habitat are growing those oaks faster than most farmers grow corn.  I will be spotlighting the amazing results of one particular hunter/tree planter in an upcoming post.

I find the name of the magazine - Gamekeepers - both apt and ironic.  Wikipedia defines a game keeper as:

... a person who manages an area of countryside to make sure there is enough game for shooting, or fish for angling, and who actively manages areas of woodland, moorland, waterway or farmland for the benefit of game birds, deer, fish and wildlife in general.
Typically, a gamekeeper is employed by a landowner, and often in the UK by a country estate, to prevent poaching, to rear and release game birds such as pheasants and partridge, eradicate pests, encourage and manage wild red grouse, and to control predators such as foxes, to manage habitats to suit game, and to monitor the health of the game.

The magazine title is apt in the sense that there is a growing number of folks who take a very active role in making their land as attractive and nourishing as possible for wildlife.  This generally means managing for game species like deer, turkeys, grouse, pheasants, etc. but the "unintended" consequence of this management is a huge amount of habitat for non-game species.  And from personal experience I know that even the most hard-bitten deer hunter takes tremendous pride in the multitude of non-game species his or her land supports.

And, as I say, people growing food for humans could learn an awful lot from the way that these intensive wildlife habitat managers - these gamekeepers - are growing food for wildlife.

It is ironic from a historical standpoint.  As per the Wiki definition, the game keeper was typically the dude in the employ of the local aristocrat charged with keeping the riff raff from "poaching" the earl or duke's game.  Well now the descendents of that riff raff, transported across the pond, are all aristocrats (which also means that none are aristocrats) and are all lords of their own manors, managing their own land for wildlife.  And that is a very good thing.

There is no online version of Gamekeepers.  The publishers were kind enough to give me permission to reprint the article here on this humble blog.  Here it is:

How to eat as good as your deer

Making acorns a part of your diet

By Christian Siems

Jeff Foxworthy is a very funny man, and a few years ago he delivered a very funny keynote address at the Quality Deer Management Convention.  He spoke about his lifelong love of deer, and how he admires QDMA experts in the same way many folks admire Hollywood stars.  Toward the end of his talk Foxworthy told a series of  “… you might be a quality deer manager” jokes along the lines of the “… you might be a redneck” jokes for which he is famous.  I really liked this one:  “If your deer have new bedding but your wife doesn’t, you might be a quality deer manager.” 

But this is the joke that really struck a chord with me:  “If your deer eat better than your children do, you might be a quality deer manager.”  Another laugh-out-loud line to be sure.  But I doubt Foxworthy realized how true his words were; deer really do eat better than people do, for this simple reason:

Deer eat acorns, and we don’t.

Acorns were once the Staff of Life for humankind.  Humans have consumed more acorns than wheat, rice and corn combined.  Acorns remained a dietary staple until very recently in parts of Europe (in parts of Spain and France acorns accounted for 20% of caloric intake until the late 19^th century), parts of Asia (notably Korea), and California among the indigenous people.  The naturalist John Muir called the dry acorn cakes eaten by the local native people, "the most compact and strength giving food" he had ever used.  I might be romanticizing a bit here, but it is my belief that the healthiest, happiest and most peaceful people who have ever lived on Earth were acorn-eaters. 

Why did we humans eat acorns?  The answer is easy.   Acorns are incredibly nutritious and easy to gather.  Acorns are rich in protein, amino acids, carbohydrates, but most importantly fat.  People once inherently understood that fat is an essential nutrient, back before dietary geniuses told us that fat is evil (and before we all got fat trying to avoid eating fat).  Communities who subsisted largely on acorns could gather a year’s worth of nutrition in just a few days of work.  In my research I have noticed that European regions that rely heavily on tree crops (these days it’s more likely walnuts and chestnuts than acorns) have an awful lot of leisure time on their hands.  Bocce ball is huge among nut eating cultures.  So is sitting in the shade, drinking coffee and chatting.  For hours.

I have also found a study from Korea suggesting that eating sawtooth oak (Quercus acutissima) acorns can delay the onset of dementia.  You realize what this means, of course:  With the widespread planting of sawtooth oak for wildlife habitat, our deer and wild turkeys have better memories than we do.  Then again, hunters already know that.

Why did we stop eating acorns?  That answer is considerably more complicated.  An acorn diet was truly “easy street” in terms of nutritional value per man hour expended.  So why break our backs working the soil to produce annual grain crops instead?  Two dueling groups of anthropologists (and trust me, there’s nothing more fierce and scary than a dueling anthropologist) have filled a lot of research papers trying to explain the transition from acorn to agriculture.  One group claims that annual crop agriculture made permanent settlements – a.k.a. “civilization” – possible.  The other group claims that permanent settlements over-taxed local acorn resources causing catastrophic food shortages that necessitated the development of annual crops.

Either way, it’s our great loss, both in terms of health and in terms of energy expended (both human and fuel) per calorie consumed.  It’s time to rediscover the benefits of adding acorns to our diet.

MAKING ACORN FLOUR

If you eat acorns raw you will notice that after an initial sweet, nutty, sometimes buttery taste your tongue will quickly start to go numb, as though you have been sucking on boot leather for an hour (I’m guessing here – I haven’t actually sucked on boot leather, and anyways it wasn’t for a whole hour).  That’s the tannins you are tasting – tannins which, coincidentally, are used in tanning leather.  Luckily those tannins are water soluble and are easily removed.

Instructions for making acorn flour (borrowing heavily from an awesome web site – a must for all sportsmen who love food – www.honest-food.net):

1) Gather acorns.  Acorns from the white oak group (bur oak, swamp chestnut oak, overcup oak, etc. – the ones with the rounded leaf tips) tend to be less tannic, but that’s a generalization.  Try various types of acorns, from various trees; you’ll notice enormous variation in sweetness between acorns of the same species, with some that can be eaten right off the tree and some that really curl your toes.

2) Shell the acorns.  The high tech tools I use most often to do this:  A hammer (pounding the top of the acorn where the cap used to be) and my teeth.  Don’t tell my dentist.

3) Leach the tannins.  Grind the raw acorn nutmeats into fine meal – a coffee grinder works, or you can go “old school” with a mortar and pestle.  Mix 1 cup of the meal for every 3 cups of cold water, and pour into a glass jar with a lid.  Once each day shake the mixture, wait 12 hours, pour off the water (and dissolved tannins), and replace the water.  Repeat for 1 to 2 weeks until the flour has lost its tannic bitterness.

4) Dry the flour.  Pour the acorn/water mixture into a cheesecloth strainer and gently squeeze out the water.  Spread the flour in a thin layer on a cookie sheet and place in an oven with the temperature set as low as it will go (a food dehydrator also works).  Dry the flour, mixing from time to time.  When completely dry put it in a blender with a dry blade and grind into flour.  Sift through a fine mesh sieve to remove any lingering large pieces.

5) Store finished flour in the fridge.

Another way to leach and save a larger quantity of acorns is to boil the nutmeats whole, changing water each time it darkens (repeat 3 to 6 times, until the acorns taste like chestnuts).  Then dry the acorns in a 300 degree oven for approximately 30 minutes.  Roasting in this way brings out the sugars and helps preserve the acorns.  These acorn pieces can be eaten whole, oiled and salted, or added to soups and sauces.

ACORN RECIPES

Acorn flour can be substituted for a portion of the wheat flour in most baking recipes.  At my house we substitute a cup of acorn flour for one of the three cups of flour in our favorite bread recipe.  We also substitute ½ cup of acorn flour for wheat flour when we make pizza dough.  In both cases the result has a mild nutty flavor, is less “carby,” and is a lot more satisfying.  Here are a couple of specific recipes I have made and really like:

Acorn Maple Syrup Cookies

Preheat to 350 degrees

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup acorn flour
1-1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.  Melt the butter then add the syrup.  Add the rest of the wet ingredients to the butter/syrup mixture.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.  I sometimes find I need to add 1 to 2 more tablespoons of wheat flour if the dough is too gloppy (to use a technical culinary term).  Drop spoonfuls onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 13 to 15 minutes.

Acorn Walnut Bread (adapted from www.wildfoodplants.com)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup acorn flour
1/4 cup milk
1 cup maple syrup

1 cup applesauce
1/2 cup crumbled black walnuts
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/8 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 eggs (great reason to double the recipe!)

Mix flours and baking powder in small bowl. Combine milk, maple syrup, applesauce, vegetable oil and eggs in large mixing bowl. Mix well and stir in dry ingredients…adding black walnuts at the end. Pour into small, buttered bread pan and bake for roughly 45 minutes.

You get the idea:  Anything you can bake becomes tastier, healthier and more satisfying when you substitute acorn flour for a portion of the white flour.  After eating you will be amazed how long you feel full. 

Adding acorns to your diet is good for your health, but it can also be good for your hunting.  Viewing your oak trees as a food source forces you to be more in tune with when the acorns from various trees tend to drop (early or late), and how much competition there is from wildlife for the acorns of certain trees.  You will begin to view your property in much the same way that deer and turkeys view it, which in turn will help you better understand their dietary needs and movements.

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Christian Siems is a forester with Wilson Forestry Supply and author of the blog www.oak-watch.blogspot.com.  Chris collaborates with Mossy Oak’s Nativ Nurseries on tree tubes for protecting oak seedlings from deer browse, so they grow faster and produce acorns (for deer and people) sooner.  Chris welcomes your questions and ideas about eating acorns and can be reached at siemschristian-at-gmail.com.

Acorns in the mail: The Gambel-er

Getting a care package of acorns in the mail makes every day seem like Christmas.  This time it's Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii) acorns gathered in Colorado and sent by my buddy DGP4.

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These little guys came with some serious advance billing in the form of an email entitled "Gambel bliss" (now there's an email from one tree geek to another!) from DGP:  "Every tree I sample has the lowest tannin acorns I ever done tasted."  (It always amuses me when my southern friends have a more pronounced drawl via email than they do in person.  Does that mean I should start putting "eh" and "you betcha" in my emails?)

Tannins = bitter.  When eaten fresh from the shell most acorns - as much as I love them and believe with all my heart that eating acorns on a grand scale will be our salvation - have a coat-your-tongue bitterness like you have been sucking on shoe leather for an hour (not that I have ever sucked on shoe leather and anyways it wasn't for a whole hour).  The water soluble tannins are easily leached in water, but the bitterness does add a step to the process of consuming acorns without curling your toes.

Of course I hadn't even left the post office parking lot before I had cracked and eaten the first of these little gems.  I know from long experience to have my secret acorn tannin antidote close at hand when tasting raw acorns (a can of Mountain Dew).  The Dew was completely unnecessary and my buddy was right: these acorns had not a trace of tannin bitterness.  Flat out delicious.  

So I decided to change plans.  When I was told the acorns had been mailed (and started checking my PO box three times a day like a kid checking his Christmas stocking) the plan was to grind, leach and dry roast them into a fine flour for baking into bread or granola bars.  Now that I have tasted them (and more to the point, now that I have not tasted them) I have a simpler idea:  light coating (translation: heavy slathering) of oil, dash (translation: solid crust) of sea salt, and roasting.  Can't wait.

Except that I'll have to wait.  These little suckers are tiny and shelling them will be a bit of a chore.  I'll let you know when I'm done and how it went.

Then I'm going to market them as "Colorado Cashews."  Just another million dollar idea.  That will die in my kitchen. 

BYOP

...Which of course stands for Bring Your Own Pestle.  I posted about this place before but since that post lacked photographs it was essentially useless.  Which distinguished it not at all from most of my posts.  Not four miles from where I'm sitting is Morro Bay State Park.  The park's wonderful little Natural History Museum is tucked behind a huge rock outcrop.

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Carved out of the bedrock, as the sign helpfully points out, are mortars used by the indigenous Chumash people to grind acorns into meal and flour.  If you squint through the trees you see the water of Morro Bay.  What a life that would have been!  Sitting overlooking the bay and visiting with friends while grinding a year's worth of nutrition.  And yes, they each brought their own personal pestles.  Here's a better shot, sans signage:

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How, you ask, could they have overlooked the bay when sitting astride these mortars, what with all the vegetation in the way?  Let's look up, shall we?

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I don't think these bloody eucalyptus were here when the Chumash were actively using this site.  I think that perhaps a little "ground line pruning" would be in order here.

My son's elementary school toured the Natural History Museum and the guide made a special point of showing them these mortars.  I first learned of them several years ago, long before I had any idea that fate would land me just around the bay, when on a business trip to the area I stopped by the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce and asked if they knew of any bedrock mortars nearby.  The woman there told me of this spot, but I was crushed for time and didn't get a chance to visit back then.  No doubt her recollection springs from a childhood visit to the site as well.  It's very cool to know that school children in this area are made aware of this amazing place, right at the age when such things make a deep impression on them.

Looks like pizza

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When I took this photo of a trio of California white oaks (Q. lobata) growing in a clump on a hill surrounded with wheat (photo taken near Creston, CA) I was all set to launch into a rant about the stupidity of beating the snot out the soil to produce a cereal crop on land that for centuries supported its inhabitants with acorns.

But in light of the previous post I'm seeing this photo in a whole new light.  Acorns plus wheat equals... pizza dough.  Or really, really good bread.

The problem, to me, is one of scale and proportion.  I hope I live to see a day when oaks will be the primary crop on land like this, wheat is an afterthought, and the farmer spend a lot more time sitting in the shade with his friends than sitting on a tractor burnin' oil.

I wonder if the farmer knows that he can produce a different, more nutritious flour from the bounty of this field that fetches 18 bucks a pound?  For some reason I doubt it.  But in field after field - be it a corn field in central Minnesota with a magnificent bur oak or a vineyard in Tulare, CA with a giant California white oak - I see oaks left standing where they arguably detract from the productivity of the target crop being grown, and I often wonder why.  Yes, there are regulations here in CA and probably elsewhere restricting the removal of mature oaks.  But I don't think that's the answer.  I think something deep in our psyche finds reassurance and comfort in seeing those oaks.  We subconsciously know - even if our conscious mind has long forgotten - that the crops we are laboring so hard to grow are fragile and foreign, and are one water shortage or disease away from disappearing.  The presence of these "farm field oaks" tells our subconscious that even after we beat up the soil beyond the ability to produce row crops there will still be food.

Well what do you know?  I managed to get my rant in any way!