You can eat acorns!!!

OK, maybe you already knew that. Maybe you even knew that many woodland Native American peoples lived off acorns as one of their main winter staples, well into the 20th century.

But did you know that plain old acorns, before they are properly processed, taste like earwax???

You have to go through a long process of pouring boiling water over the peeled acorns to drain away that puckery bitterness, then dry them and pound them into a kind of rough flour. Then you can cook them, like corn grits, or the slow kind of oatmeal, into mush.

I learned this from Into The Forest, by Jean Hegland, a fascinating book about two teenage sisters who have to survive on their own in the California woods after the rest of society disintegrates around them. It’s a pretty “dark” book, so I’m not reviewing it for this blog. But you might want to read it by the time you’re high school age.

And meanwhile…enjoy those acorns!