The newest, as in some ways the oldest, of the foraged foods is an Acorn Bread that I made last weekend.  Late last fall, we were hiking in the Santa Cruz mountains and I noticed that a bunch of acorns (specifically from a coastal oak) were littering the trail so I decided that we should harvest a bunch.  On the way back down the trail, we stopped to collect a couple handfuls of acorns, loading them up in my sweatshirt and walking them back to the car.

When we got back home, the long process of prepping acorns began.

Step 1 is shelling – pretty much just hit them with a hammer and then pick the meat out of the shell.

Any project that lets me use a hammer in the kitchen is a good project.

Eat only the inside.

Step 2 is leaching to remove the bitter tannins.  I chose to hot leach boiling the acorns in 4 sets of water which ended up with a mildly bitter but good tasting nuts.  You can also cold leach in running water for a couple of days which is apparently better for making flour, but I didn’t know that at the time so live and learn.

Leaching takes a while and is rather amazing when you taste the difference between progressive boilings.

Step 3 is grind the flour.  I used my coffee grinder (which I only use for spices really) and made a powder in a couple minutes.

It was surprisingly easy to grind into a fine powder.

Step 4 is making acorn bread. You will need:

1/2 cup of acorn flour
1 cup of white (or wheat) flour
1 cup of buttermilk (I used milk slightly curdled by lemon juice)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup of molasses

Grease a casserole dish, then fill it up with a mixture of the above ingredients.  Seal the casserole dish with aluminum foil and cook for 2 hours at 250 degrees.  You should check every once in awhile for doneness since you are using found ingredients which could vary the cook times somewhat.  Eat hot and it tastes almost like a more dense earthy pumpkin pie, or have leftovers slightly sauteed in butter.

Mmmm… tasty bread.

Good luck and happy foraging, and once again thanks to Backyard Foraging for the inspiration.

Something I had always heard of but never drank before was dandelion wine, so a little over a month ago there was a couple days of rain, then a couple days of sun, which led to a small explosion of dandelions.  I decided when life gives you dandelions, you should make dandelion wine.

Step 1 – Collect a ton of dandelions – like a larger handful – for every cup of wine you are making.

Some harvest occurred at the neighbors’. They approved of my weed removal.

Step 2 – Remove the petal (the yellow part) of the dandelion and get rid of the rest of the dandelions. We are making 750 ml (1 bottle of wine) so we need about 1.5 cups of petals. Now rinse off petals well – don’t do this before separating the petals as it is harder when wet.

Not exciting.

The volume of the petal is disheartening after the work for it. I would be a bad saffron picker.

Step 3- Boil together the petals, 750 ml water, juice of 1/2 lemon, 1 tsp ginger, and 1 cup of sugar.  After it boils, simmer for 30 minutes.  Let sit for a couple minutes, then strain into a clean wine bottle.

Step 4 – When the mixture is at body temperature, add in 1 tsp of champagne yeast (or any other wine yeast) and close off with a bubble check valve.  After one week of fermenting, transfer to another clean wine bottle and add the check valve to the new wine bottle.  After another week of this, you can cork the bottle or just leave the bubbler on.

Step 5 – Wait at least 2 more weeks, and preferably even longer as it apparently ages well.  We couldn’t contain ourselves longer than another 2 weeks so we tried it then.  It was quite tasty, light and not very alcoholic.  Almost like a mix of cider and unoaked Chardonnay.  I’ll do it again once more dandelions are about, this time letting it age properly.

Ours came out clearer and a little less yellow than expected. I imagine that means we need more dandelions in the next batch.