Over the last few weeks Katrina and I have
been benefitting from the fruits of our autumn labors. Processing and leaching acorns has become a
weekly ritual and we have been enjoying our canned, frozen, dried, and
fermented fruits. Today I finished leaching another batch of
Garry Oak (Quercus garryana)
acorns. I saved the leaching water each
day after I poured it off so that I could compare the water color over the
course of the 6 changes of water. As you
can see, the water from the 1st day is significantly darker than the
2nd day, which in turn is significantly darker than the 3rd. Thereafter, however, the difference is barely
perceptible. For the last 3 months I
have been grinding my acorns with a Vitamix instead of my old pathetic blender
and the Vitamix is producing finer flour.
I was in the habit of leaching for 5 or 6 days, but that might not be
necessary anymore. Based on the color of
my leaching water, I will experiment with only three changes of water next time.  |
| Acorn bread cooking |
After months of enjoying the ease of dry-grinding acorns with the Vitamix, today
I decided to mix things up a bit and experimented with wet-grinding acorns. When I
was dry-grinding acorns the flour would heat up and get clumpy, preventing the
flour from freely circulating throughout the blender container. Not only was this keeping me from getting a
really fine grind, I think that prematurely heating the acorns may have caused
the oils to leach out more easily, damaging both flavor and nutrition of
the final product. Today when I used water
while grinding acorns, I created a suspension of acorn flour and grit. I noticed that in this suspension it was easier
for the large particles of acorn grit to settle through the acorn flour to the bottom
of the mixer where they were pulverized by the spinning blade. Water also keeps the flour nice and cool throughout the grinding process.
These past few weeks I have also put the blender to work making delicious wild berry smoothies that are a perfect balance of creamy, sweet, tart, and chewy. If you have never had a chewy smoothie, you’ve got to try it. Here is the recipe for my new favorite smoothie:
1 Banana (for
creaminess)
¾ cup frozen Evergreen Huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum)
¼ cup dried
Salal (Gaultheria shallon) berries
(for chewiness)
¼ cup water
1 heaping
tablespoon Blue Elderberry (Sambucus
caerulea) jelly
If you don't have Salal, try substituting dried blueberries or
cranberries.
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| Canned Crabapples (Malus fusca) and Crabapple cider |
We recently cracked open our first quart
of this year’s Crabapples (Malus fusca). After several months resting in very light
syrup, I found the sourness of the Crabapples had mellowed to a pleasant
pucker. We sucked them right off the
stems like applesauce popsicles. A few days ago Katrina bottled some cider that she made with a mixture of
Crabapple juice and apple cider that we pressed last fall.
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| Katrina working her magic |