Lunch with Sam

I would bake the acorns in the fire, and grind them between stones. … I would simply add spring water to the flour and bake this on a piece of tin. When done, I had the best pancakes ever. They were flat and hard, like I imagined Indian bread to be. I liked them, and would carry the leftovers in my pockets for lunch.

Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

What child doesn’t fantasize about running away at least once in their life? I know I did. My destination in my daydreams was an old, dilapidated building called Miller’s Garage. For some reason I loved Miller’s Garage. I always said I was going to buy it and live there when I grew up–before it was torn down and replaced by a shopping center with a grocery store, a dentist, and a True Value. (Fun fact: I loved Miller’s Garage so much that the Christmas after it was torn down my parents gave me a commissioned watercolor of it. It’s still hanging on my wall. I’m a little bemused at the dwelling aspirations of my seven-year-old self.) Here’s a key fact about Miller’s Garage: it was two miles from my house. I never thought to run farther away than that. To be honest, I would have been happy running away in my own backyard.

I remember telling a friend that I was going to run away and her pleading with me not to. But my announcement was only a grand, empty claim calculated to get a reaction. My daydreams about running away stemmed more from a desire for independence than from unhappiness with my home life. Something deep down in all of us, I believe, yearns to be independent. Or, to put a finer point on it, self-sufficient. (Although, depending on your worldview, you could argue that there’s no such thing as true self-sufficiency; not one of us could sustain our own lives without God. But that is a different blog post for a different sort of blog altogether.)

One of the ways in which we can get a small taste of self-sufficiency is by foraging our own food. This year I foraged acorns and hickory nuts–wandering the yard barefoot as I scanned the ground, stuffing my pockets with a squirrel’s bounty.

Have you ever eaten a raw acorn? On a group camping trip about nine or ten years ago a friend and I tried to nibble on some acorns we found. They were the most vile thing I’d ever put in my mouth, their bitterness consuming. So I was surprised when these pancakes turned out to be delicious!

After I had let my acorns cure in the sun for a couple weeks, my boyfriend and I floated them in a bowl of water and picked out the bad ones that floated to the top. Then we cracked the good nuts, ground them in a blender, and put them in the fridge in a container of water to soak out the tannins. I changed the water two or three times a day for three days, at the end of which the bitterness was (miraculously, to me) gone. I baked them on the lowest heat my oven would consent to for an hour or so to dry them out a bit, blitzed them again in a blender, and made these pancakes, inspired by but by no means identical to Sam Gribley’s.

Sam would shake his head over my pancakes. Far from being hard, they were light and soft, with an interesting chew from the acorn meal (I should have ground it more finely). And most of the ingredients were sourced from a grocery store: flour, sugar, baking soda, eggs. But I think I’m doing pretty well to have even one foraged ingredient in my pancakes! My boyfriend, sister, and I greatly enjoyed them. As you’ll see from the photos, we ate them with blueberries in a nod to Sam and Bando’s blueberry jam.

And, just for kicks, here’s a video about acorn bacon by BlackForager on YouTube. I found it intriguing and hilarious. Maybe I should put acorn bacon on next year’s project list? If you watch the video, let me know what you think in the comments!

Oh! Almost forgot, but I hope it was obvious from the post: I loved the book! Thanks for the recommendation, Kyle!