Grampa Leads Them Astray: The Acorn Collaboration

Mike and Kim, the Competent, Careful, and Responsible parents, went cheerfully off to a seminar on Science and Faith, leaving their innocent children under the care and supervision of the Competent, Careful, and Responsible gramma -- and Grampa.

While Gramma was distracted by the shower, Grampa was lounging around the kitchen in the general vicinity of Eleanor, who's 8 and pretty much self-starting, and Amanda, who's 6 and quietly self-starting, and Luke, who's 3 and pretty much in his own universe.

Luke constructed a very sensible and well-proportioned walking stick from Tinker Toy pieces, walked about using it reasonably; Amanda made airplanes from Tinker Toys and zoomed around the living room with them; and Eleanor slipped outside and returned with a handful of freshly-fallen acorns. Meanwhile, Grampa quietly sipped coffee and observed.

Eleanor found a stout toothpick and began patiently de-husking an acorn. This was rather tedious, and gave Grampa time to finish his coffee, which gave him time to realize that finding a better way to de-husk the acorns might be a real service to his Next-but-Eldest granddaughter.

Grampa fetched a freshly sharpened paring knife from the drawer and begin tediously de-husking an acorn. Eleanor said, relevantly, "I'm not allowed to use knives since Dad sharpened them." Grampa did not say, but thought, 'I'm not sure this is safe for my own fingers; it's pretty awkward.'

Then he had another thought. "Eleanor:" he said. "Maybe we should make some acorn bread."

She beamed. Eleanor generally finds insane ideas refreshing. There have been no switched babies in her lineage, that's sure. "OK," she said, "what do we do?"

Grampa, who had only a ghost of an idea, said (to buy time), "First we have to figure out a way to get these acorns peeled faster."

He set up an assembly line. The pile of fresh acorns at the left, the sun shining in the windows center and right; he put the cutting board on the table and picked the big, freshly-sharp chef's knife from the drawer. He put two cereal bowls in front of Eleanor. He said, "Here. I'll cut these things in quarters, and then you can just peel the shells off. Put the shells in one bowl and the meats in this other.

They hadn't worked long before Amanda and Luke joined the assembly line as helpers. Luke was occasionally helpful; he preferred to select particular acorns for Grampa to slice personally for him to peel, and he didn't always put the shells in the right bowl, and he didn't always peel them first; which mildly distressed Eleanor.

We soon ran through the first acorns. Amanda saw the need coming and harvested more; Luke slipped out and soon brought in a zip-lock bag containing about 2 dozen acorns immersed in fresh water. He set the bag on the table. "Luke, please be careful not to spill that," Grampa said optimistically. Luke carefully set on the table, paused to check that it was nicely balanced upright, and turned away. The bag fell over. Happily, there just happened to be 2 terry towels within reach...

Meanwhile, Grampa and Eleanor trudged along with the acorn-quartering and acorn-peeling task. Grandma emerged from her ablutions all fresh and shiny and helped. It is somewhat slow, this acorn-peeling process. This gave Grampa time to think about how to make acorn flour with the tools at hand.

In case you haven't done this lately, the first problem is that acorns are moist. Moist nuts don't grind well. And what do we use for a grinder? I must have asked this out loud, for Eleanor said, "Mom has an old coffee grinder." "Perfect," Grampa said.

We decided to dry the meats in the oven, and to chop them down from quarter-acorn size to coffee-bean size (it seemed logical). So the cereal-bowl full of meats was upended on the cutting board and the big knife chopped and chopped.

Grampa remembered how bitter the red-oak acorns were that he nibbled as a child. He remembered that bitterness can be water-extracted from some foods. So Eleanor found frying pan, filled it half-full of water, and dumped in the meats. Then she put them on the stove and simmered them for nearly a half hour, stirring gently. The water turned slowly brown. There's a lot of tannin in oak. It had quite a nice, nutty fragrance.

Then a cookie sheet with sides was found by Eleanor, and the chopped meats were spread upon it. The oven was rather arbitrarily set to 250 dF (hotter than boiling, maybe not hot enough to burn), and the grandchildren and Gramma drifted off while the oven did its work and Grampa operated the sink and dishtowel.

After half an hour, it was now 11 am; lunch was threatening to derail our continuity, and the project was nearly beyond our collective attention span. Grampa took a nutmeat from the oven. It was hot, and the outside was dry, but when he broke it, it seemed just a bit soft. What to do?

A nice burr grinder had been retired to a top shelf in the pantry, put out of service by the new coffeemaker having an integral grinder. Grampa brought it down and investigated. He upended it over the garbage disposer and shook out three stale coffee beans. He carefully dusted out the stale grounds and cleaned the receptacle.

He and Eleanor carefully considered how to approach this challenge. While the grinder seemed disused, we decided Dad would be annoyed if the burrs became gummed up with acorn meat. We decided that a little white rice mixed with the acorn meats would cleanse the burrs and not distort the fine acorn aroma.

And in fact this worked well. We set the grind on 'coarse' just to make sure we got the least gumminess, and got nearly 2 cups of acorn meal. Then Grampa put a couple tablespoons of pure rice in the grinder and ran it through to cleanse the system. It would have been a lot better if he'd attached the grounds-cup first, though: ground rice flooded the countertop and spilled on the floor.

Grampa got the broom and dustpan. Luke ran off, and came back with a tiny toy broom, perfect for the counter. Together we saved the day.

Now we had to figure out what ingredients we could combine to make a sort of bread or cracker. And we wanted to make it Amanda-safe, so we couldn't use egg or dairy or tree nuts.

(Grampa is an internist who has tried hard to stay up on allergy, and doesn't know of any cross-allergenicity between dietary tree nuts and acorns; and the Internet agreed: "I have found no evidence that acorns or chestnuts are dangerous for nut-allergic children or adults. Edible chestnuts do cause anaphylaxis in some people, but these are not particularly the people who react to peanuts or the other common tree nuts. Rather, such reactions are linked to latex allergy, quite a separate problem, although both problems happen in people who are 'atopic' (predisposed to common allergies." -- in http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~aair/nut_corr.htm)

We decided that that the acorn meal was sort of coarse. How to make a smooth batter that might cook up to a cracker-like endpoint? Gramma's expertise was mined. She found a small bag of whole-wheat flour, and Eleanor and Amanda stirred while Grampa added water a little at a time. With about 1/4th cup of whole-wheat flour, it still seemed a bit coarse. We sprinkled in about 1/8th cup of egg replacer (Amanda-safe), then another 1/8th cup. This smoothed it out quite nicely. There was a nearly-empty jar of wildflower honey nearby on the counter begging to be added. So Grampa upended the jar over the batter, adding about 1/3 cup of honey.

Now we were nearly done. A half-teaspoon of baking powder (to aerate it quickly) and a half-teaspoon of baking soda (to aerate it while baking) went in. Gramma and Eleanor spread a little vegetable oil on a cookie sheet. The batter was carefully smoothed onto the sheet.

The oven was rather arbitrarily set at 350 dF and cooking commenced. It began a light tan. Half an hour later, when we took it out and went to Red Robin for lunch, it looked brown. When we came home at the end of the afternoon, it looked chocolate.

Luke wanted to have the first taste. He took one bite, said quite firmly, "I don't like it." Grampa said, "You can throw it away." He seemed a little surprised to be permitted not to like it, and was quite willing to give it up. Allergic Amanda had a tiny taste, with no bad side effects -- but she didn't plead for more. Rumor has it that she ate one piece. Eleanor had one piece. Grampa had three pieces during the next hour. It isn't bitter; it does taste of honey; it leaves a slight, persistent astringency low behind the tongue. It actually has moderately complex, interesting flavor.

I am thinking that a little cinnamon, and maybe some raisins, might be good next time. And I do like these North Carolina oak trees: their acorns are definitely less bitter than Minnesota.