Acorn Foraging: Everything You Need to Know to Harvest One of Autumn's Best Wild Edible Foods, with Recipes, Photographs and Step-by-Step Instructions

by Alicia Bayer

Acorns are one of the healthiest, tastiest and most versatile foods you can eat, and were once a mainstay of diets throughout the world. These nutritious nuts can be used as a fabulous gluten-free flour in breads and baked goods of all types, a fantastic base for sweet dishes or non-dairy milks, a grain-free hot cereal, a delicious coffee substitute or a protein in main dishes—in addition to hundreds of other delicious uses.

You can't get much more paleo than acorns. People were eating acorns long before they began cultivating grains. They make a delicious grain-free flour but are also great for vegans and vegetarians, since acorns provide a complete protein and make truly delectable "meatballs" and other savory dishes. You can even soak and blend dried acorns and make a rich, nutty non-dairy milk or cream from them.

Roasted acorns create robust flavored dishes, while dried acorn flour has a more buttery, almost caramel-like flavor. When dried acorns are ground into a coarse meal, they cook up similar to corn meal. When ground fine, they work as a great gluten-free flour. When they're not roasted or dried, the chopped or whole acorns are similar in texture to garbanzo beans with a nutty flavor. Roasted nuts can be stored whole and then ground as flour when needed, or soaked and used the way you would dried beans.

So why doesn't everybody still eat acorns? Like so much else, the knowledge has been lost to many over time. Acorns contain bitter tannins that must be leached out before you can cook with them. The good news is that it's easy to do and there are several great ways to do this that produce acorns and acorn flour with different flavors and uses (all covered in the book with details and pictures).

In this comprehensive book, you'll learn the history and nutritional benefits of acorns, plus how to:

• Find acorns;
• Easily sort out the good from the bad;
• Process your acorns in a variety of ways;
• Make acorn flour and meal;
• Store acorns and acorn flour so they stay fresh;
• Cook over 70 delicious sweet and savory recipes for acorn pancakes, donuts, drinks, soup, meatballs, fritters, stuffing, ice cream, cookies and much more.

Acorns are a sustainable, healthy, delicious food source right under our feet. Now you can learn how to easily forage your own acorns and use them in all kinds of wonderful ways.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Cookbooks

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 9, 2017

About the author

Alicia Bayer lives in Minnesota with her husband and five children. Her writing has been widely published in books, magazines, literary journals, newsletters and online at sites such as Huffington Post, Peggy O'Mara and Pathways to Family Wellness.

She maintained national columns on the topics of homeschooling, parenting and sustainable living for six years and has maintained the nonprofit website, A Magical Childhood, for over 20 years, in addition to a number of blogs and websites on topics of sustainable living, homeschooling and other passions.

She has published the free nonprofit nature magazine Wild Kids Magazine online for six years.

She is the author of nine books:

NEW— Flower Girls (Feminist Floral Poems and artwork)

A is for Acorns (a foraging alphabet book, illustrated by Toria Bayer)

Poems from Under a Toadstool (children's nature-based poetry, illustrated by Rhiannon Bayer)

A Magical Homeschool: Nature Studies (52 Wonderful Ways to Use Nature Studies in Every Season to Teach Science, Math, Art and More)

Elderberries: The Beginner's Guide to Foraging, Preserving and Using Elderberries for Health Remedies, Recipes, Drinks and More

Acorn Foraging: Everything You Need to Know to Harvest One of Autumn’s Best Wild Edible Foods, with Recipes, Photographs and Step-By-Step Instructions

Getting Started Homeschooling: Everything You Need to Know About Legal Requirements, Curricula, Testing, Types of Homeschooling, Learning Styles, Socialization and Making It Fun for Everyone

Crazy Broken Thing (Poems from the Attic, Book One)

Slut Shamed (Inappropriate Feminist Poems, Poems from the Attic, book two)

More books on these topics and others are coming soon.

Reviews

[Shez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't wait to go acorn foraging and give these recipes a try. I'm particularly interested in trying Racahout - a hot drink made from acorns, as I don't react well to caffeine and don't like most teas. I think this recipe will fit the need I have for a thicker drink.

As a homeschooler, I couldn't but think about how this book could form the basis of a really good cross-curriculum unit study:
- history of acorns as food
- which cultures use/d acorns as food and how did they go about harvesting etc..
- which recipes are region specific and why
- oak identification
- and then of course the hands-on part of foraging, shelling, leeching out the tannins, roasting, grinding and finally cooking some of the amazing-looking recipes.

Best of all, this is a unit study that would work across many ages by adjusting the requirements for each age group.

[Shula · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a homeschooler’s dream. Like with another of Alicia’s books, I used it with my co-op class.

We learned about the different types of oaks and then went on foraging trips, both for our collection for bread making and for the Potomac Conservancy’s program to repopulate the area with native trees https://www.facebook.com/share/r/18rL...

They learned why you want to keep native trees and avoid exotic ones

My students have a whole new appreciation for the native peoples who had to process the acorns for tannins and then turn it into bread

I like to think these activities gave them an entirely new appreciation for the world around them

[Dan Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book too late in the year to benefit the record -setting red oak mast. So I have not yet had a chance to try out the techniques and recipes in the book. Once I do, I will likely raise the star rating.

[Oxalis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty basic book, providing some practical information about acorn harvesting for the amateur. Included is a fairly generous variety of recipes guaranteed to cater to all tastes. Despite fulfilling its basic objective, the text was not without its issues. It was difficult to ignore typos that could have been solved by an editor or, at the very least, a proofreader. (The content could also use a good typesetter, but I know most readers won't notice such things.) Most of the images are grainy, small, and don't provide much help in supplementing the text. Bayer loses some credibility as a professional author by failing to cite her sources. She mentions references in the text but never cites them in footnotes, a references section, or a bibliography. There are some wording issues, for example, "species" and "variety" are used interchangeably, and these certainly aren't synonyms in botany or horticulture. I was also hoping to learn more about identifying the different species of oak trees, but I guess this was beyond the author's scope. Nonetheless, the author was successful in pitching the importance of acorns as a food source to me (it didn't take much for a plant lover). While all of the shortcomings are to be expected from a self-published book, Bayer makes a valid point that acorns have the potential to become a much greater part of our agriculture and our diets. I look forward to trying out some of the techniques in this book, provided I can find the spare time to gather and leach enough acorns.

[Victoria Cieslewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing!