Foraging Adventures: Acorns

I am always on the lookout for new things to try and ways to be more sustainable. I do have a garden that I pick fresh greens out of (I'll talk about that more another time), but who doesn't love stumbling upon something that required no labor just waiting to be harvested? You know what I'm talking about if you live in Washington like me... summer basically means blackberry pie, cobbler, jam, and wine.

One night, I was wandering along home on a different route than I usually take, but this time I was on foot. Now, I told you how much I bike right? Well, this was one of those rare occasions where I decided to walk home. It gets pretty blustery in Bellingham in the autumn so I thought at first that it was just rain and wind rustling around in the trees. I notice these fairly large rain drops falling from the tree, but somehow I'm not getting wet at all. Confused, I look down at the ground and realize that it wasn't rain at all that was falling from the tree... it was an acorn!

Now, I had to do some extensive research to figure out which tree this little acorn came from (well, actually it's quite a big acorn but that's alright). Eventually I found the USDA Plant Database and I'm thinking the tree was an Oregon White Oak tree. Correct me if I am wrong, but it was the closest leaf I could find that had lobes and solid margins. Here's one of the leaves I picked up from off the ground to help me identify it.

After locating these shiny jewels, I decided to come back later to harvest and do some research in the mean time about whether or not I could eat them. Turns out, acorns are very edible and good for you. One stumbling block I'm going to have, though, is preparing the acorns. It's going to be a lot of work to make anything out of these tasty jewels, so I better get cracking (pun intended!).

In case you are interested too, here are the links I found while researching acorns and what to do with them. I'm considering making some acorn flour but the acorn soup looks pretty good too. Have you ever made anything with acorns?

theatlantic.com has a post about acorn recipes here.
Backwoods Home Magazine has an article about harvesting acorns and what to do with them after here
Practical Survivor has a great resource for harvested edibles, including the acorn here.

I'll definitely keep you updated on what I create out of these acorns. It may turn out to be a bust, but I'll try anything once, right?!