Wildness; The art and craft of foraging

The art and craft of foraging

WILDNESS SEP | OCT 2014

INSIDE THIS ISSUE: ACORN ALCHEMY It’s all About the Acorn: Gathering, Shelling, Processing, Grinding and More

REVIEW On a Nut Oil Expeller

PRESERVING Shrubs and Vinegars

FEATURES Everything you need to know about acorns and more. A nut oil expeller review.

Foraging out of necessity after a hurricane. Preserving.

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10, 11

EDITORS NOTE

ACORN ALCHEMY More then just a nut for squirrels

ONE FORAGERS REVIEW The Piteba Nut Oil Expeller

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14, 15

HIDDEN FRUITS

By Merriwether

PRESERVING Shrubs and Vinegars

NEVER EAT A PLANT UNLESS YOU ARE 100 PERCENT SURE OF ITS IDENTITY, AND CHECK WITH EXPERT SOURCES BEFORE CONSUMING ANY PLANTS THAT ARE NEW.

CONTENT Editor and Photography Heather Pier Publisher The Wild Raspberry Contributing Articles Merriwether Design Peggy Nelsen Design

www.peggynelsendesign.com WILDNESS: wildnessmagazine@gmail.com www.facebook.com/groups/WildnessMagazine/ WildnessMagazine@groups.facebook.com

© 2014 The Wild Raspberry. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2

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I“ n Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

- Henry David Thoreau

Balance

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.

– Jim Bishop

It is fall, a season that straddles both summer and winter, balancing between light and dark, hot and cold. As foragers, we notice the signs of declining vigor in the fields, the leaves changing color, and abundance in the form of ripe fruit, nuts and seeds.

While winter is the time for contemplation and stillness, fall is the time for reaping and preparation for the future.

This is a traditional time for harvest and storage, drying, curing, smoking and canning. While gardeners are usually putting their gardens to bed for the winter, foragers work on, gathering the late harvests that Mother Nature offers. We fish the salmon runs and crack black walnuts. We pound acorn flour and grind mazanita sugar. We’re still finding mushrooms and ditch plums and elderberry. We’re tincturing and making salves and stocking our larders, not always out of necessity, but often just for the enjoyment and satisfaction.

But beyond the harvest, fall is the traditional season that we most often express our gratitude for the gifts given to us throughout the year. I encourage you to rest in its balance for just a moment, revel in the slanting sunlight and marvel at the beauty we can still find in this world.

Heather Pier

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Acorn Alchemy

New foragers are intrigued by the idea of gathering and using acorns. It’s a traditional food that’s been used by many cultures for thousands of years.

Acorns, properly prepared are a delicious and nutritional powerhouse.

Shelled and leached the nuts are a reliable source of carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, minerals, including calcium and iron, and amino acids. They are brimming with good fats. A complete comparison of processed acorns to white flour can be found here: http://skipthepie.org/nut-and-seed-products/ nuts-acorns-raw/compared-to/wheat-flourwhite-industrial-protein-bleached-enriched-2/ Acorns can be pressed for oil that is similar to olive oil. And you won’t need to process the nuts to do that.

New foragers are intimidated by acorns. Processing acorns is not hard and it’s really not terribly complicated.

Even with these fairly explicit instructions, I’m sure that you’ll run into something that makes you scratch your forehead. Don’t worry. Before ‘Google’ and the Internet were invented, if we ran into a question or problems while processing we researched as best we could. We asked other foragers, we went to the library, we talked to experts. But occasionally, there was some tiny question that we just had to work out on our own.

Sometimes our experiment worked, but other times it didn’t. If it didn’t, we just started over. If it did, we celebrated our small victory and moved forward. As you learn a new skill, it’s not unusual for all sorts of doubts and fears to crop up. It’s normal to ask, ‘Am I doing this right?’ Relax.

Enjoy the process.

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All acorns are edible, but most need to be processed first. The main difference between acorns is how much processing each type takes.

There are some areas of the country (and the world) that have oak trees whose acorns need no processing. They can be eaten fresh out of the shell. One of my students from Iran says her family roasts them, much like a chestnut. If you live in the Southwest US, there are species that don’t need any work other than cracking.

But, if you’re like most of us, your acorns need to be processed. (Sad face) So what kind of oak trees grow around you? Here in California we have almost 2 dozen types of oak species. Acorn was a staple of the diet of the Native American population in my area, often providing 50 percent of the calories that were consumed. A key helps to identify what species of tree that you’re harvesting, but here is a little practical help: All oak trees fall roughly into two major categories. These categories are ‘red oaks’ and ‘white oaks’. (There is actually a third called ‘black oaks’, but for simplicities sake, we’ll leave that out for now.) And yes, for you technical types, there are a few oak trees that don’t play by these very general rules. I know that. You know that.

Move on.

The main difference between the white oak group and the red oak group is that the red ones take longer to process because they contain more tannins. And tannins are what we must overcome to eat our beautiful nuts without digestive upset.

To determine whether you have a white oak or a red oak, just look at the leaf margins. Are there pointy little spines on the edge? Then you have a red type oak. Are the margins smooth (although they may be lobed)? Then you have a white type oak, which should have lower tannin levels.

White Oak Acorns (Quercus lobata)

Some years seem to result in heavier acorn crops than others. These ‘good’ years are called mast years. Some people believe that during a ‘mast year’ all species produce an abundance of nuts simultaneously. This will result in smaller acorn crops for several years after. I’ve not found that to be true. It seems in my limited experience that different species have different mast years and that there is almost always at least one species each year being more productive than others. So you should always have some nuts of one species or another to work with. This year, in my area, it’s a great year for Valley White Oak (Quercus lobata), which has a sweet, large nut, so I’m a happy girl.

Now crack your little acorn nugget open and nibble. Taste the tannins? They make your mouth feel ‘felty’ (not unlike eating a unripe persimmon). These tannins are what we will be leaching out in future steps. Eaten in large quantities, tannins can cause damage to your kidneys, so you must remove them. No one likes to eat bitter bread.

Another factor when collecting is the size of the nut. We get a beautiful little water oak here, but its acorns are smaller than a pencil eraser. I don’t have the time or patience to crack the amount of acorns needed for a cup of flour from nuts that size, but you might.

Don’t pick your acorns from the tree. Wait until they fall to the ground. Then just pick them up. If I find a good tree, I’ll rake the nuts into a pile, hit the pile with a leaf blower to clean away leaves and loose grasses, and then scoop them into my bucket for a nice, clean harvest.

You will find acorns will holes in them. These are caused by a grub that lives in the acorn. Don’t get grossed out, but some people eat those grubs.

They are a significant source of protein. I don’t want you to do anything that you aren’t comfortable with. However, if you are intrigued by the idea, I suggest you take a look at Green Deane’s video on eating acorn grubs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSBdA0B-rwk.

(Actually, if you’re not familiar with Deane’s work, spend some time on his videos. He’s amazing.)

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Acorn Alchemy Now that you have your acorns, they must be dried. Many nuts need to be dried: walnuts, pecans, almonds. Drying makes them easier to shell and helps separate from a thin, papery layer that is found between the nut meat and the shell, called the seed coat. This seed coat contains a lot of tannins, so by simply letting your acorn dry out a bit, the nut will shrink away from this papery coating, cutting your work down.

Another reason to dry your acorns is that a dryer shell will crack easier. If there is still a lot of moisture in the shell, it will be rubbery and harder to open.

Don’t leave your acorns in plastic buckets or bags. Spread them out on a table, or a tarp. If the weather is still good, dry the nuts in the sunshine. If it’s not, bring them inside. I like to use those square flats with all the holes in the bottom that available at nurseries during the spring.

These trays let the air circulate around the nuts.

Allowing moisture to build up will result in moldy acorns. And mold in your food is not a good thing.

Unless it’s a cheese.

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Now that you are all squirrely and have a nice pile of nuts, it’s time to get ‘crackin’.

Cracking is the most tedious part of the process.

There are a couple of ways to make it seem to go faster. If you have good friends, invite them over to help you. Serve wine. Laugh. Talk. You’ll have a delightful time.

If you can’t get friends to help, spread a towel on your lap, pop in a movie.

The spent shells have uses too. Throw some out to the chickens for them to pick through. Add them to the garden path. If you keep a compost pile, and keep separate ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ piles, know that the shells are ‘cold’.

What tools should you use? Everyone has their own favorites. Metal nutcrackers, hammers, rocks, pliers and vises have all been used.

Experiment. I process a lot of nuts these days so I’ve purchased a hand cranked model by Davebilt.

However, I still have to sort the bucket and separate the nuts from the shells.

As you crack, you’ll notice a difference between the individual nutmeats. Some nuts will be the ‘gold standard’; plump, fresh with uniform color.

And we wish that all our nuts were so beautiful. But unfortunately, this isn’t the case. In the picture above right, you’ll see a range of nuts that you might get. Some will be blackened; some will be bug-eaten. Some will be moldy. But don’t throw them all out yet. Well, except the moldy ones. Throw anything moldy straight into the ‘reject’ pile.

You’ll notice some oxidation of the nuts may occur while you are shelling, especially if you’re working more than an hour or two. This is normal.

Historically, the Native Americans in my area kept a two-year supply of acorns. After two years in storage, any nut is going to show signs of deterioration. Some tribes preferred blackened nuts. So I don’t worry too much about blackening.

(Remember that there is a difference between blackening and molding. Spend an hour shelling and you will find it obvious. Throw out moldy nuts.) If the nut is half black, I’ll just pinch off the black part. If it’s less than half black, I don’t worry about it and throw it in with the rest. If there is something that looks like crumbly spider webs inside the shell and attached to the nut, you have found evidence that an acorn grub lived here.

You have two options: brush off the webbing and throw it in the bowl, or if you have decided that no bug or bug part will ever pass your lips, then throw it away. (Note: if you’re twitchy about eating bugs, never eat any store bought chocolate bars. Check the FDA website to see how many bugs and bug parts that they allow in a chocolate bar. You’ll be surprised. Or maybe disgusted.)

Modern day acorn enthusiasts have several options available for processing as well. So which one to use? It depends on how quickly you need flour and what you plan to do with it.

Once you’ve shelled all your acorns, it’s time to leach out the tannins and turn them into flour.

Native Americans used several methods to process acorns. Some were labor intensive, while others consisted of simply dropping a bag of shelled nutmeats into a stream and letting the running water do the work.

There are two ways to process acorns and each has its drawbacks and advantages.

Hot water processing allows you to get the job done quicker. It’s also useful if your recipe calls for intact nuts, such as pickles. The drawback to using heat is that you wash away many of the oils and starches that make superior baked goods.

And hot water leaching uses more natural resources in the form of gas or electricity (or whatever fuel you use to power your stove).

Cold water processing is more passive. Most folks have a refrigerator already running, so it doesn’t cost more to use. The starches and oils are left intact. But this method takes longer. continued on page 8 SEP | OCT 2014

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Acorn Alchemy So it’s your choice. Here are the directions for both methods.

HOT WATER LEACHING Place the shelled acorn nutmeats into a soup pot.

Cover with cool water and put the lid on. Bring the water to a simmer. Turn off the heat. You don’t need to boil the nuts (although there have been times when I’ve gotten distracted and come back to the pot to find it boiling. If that happens to you too, relax. Stuff happens.) Pour off the brownish-tinged water. You don’t need to use a strainer to get every drop, just use the lid and get most of the liquid. Refill with cold water. Repeat. And then repeat again. If your nuts are very sweet, try a nibble after three leachings. Chew slowly, move the nutmeat around on your tongue and then swallow. Often the aftertaste and ‘felty’ feeling will hit your taste buds after you’ve swallowed.

If you still taste the tannins, leach it again. Keep leaching until a nibble leaves no puckery, felty feeling in your mouth.

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COLD LEACHING Place about 2 cups of your nutmeats in a blender.

Cover with water and pulse. You want a mixture that looks like chunky cafe au lait, but you don’t want the nuts pureed. Pour the mess into a jar and put the lid on. Add enough water to fill the jar to the top and place the jar in the refrigerator overnight.

In the morning, you should see 3 distinct layers.

The nuts are on the bottom layer, next comes a thick layer of ‘acorn cream’. This layer is almost pure starch. If you have the time to separate this layer it, it is worth the time. This is an excellent thickener and is used to make a Korean style noodle. The top layer will be amber, tannin-filled water. Pour off the water. You don’t need to get every drop of water out of the jar. Just pour it off slowly and when the nutmeats reach the rim of the jar, stop. Refill the jar with water and put it back in the fridge for a day. Repeat each day until your nuts are tannin free. To speed things up, I’ll sometimes change out the water twice a day.

Obviously, this isn’t a quick process. Sweet acorns should take 5 or 6 days of refrigeration.

But remember, it all varies by species. It might take longer. Red acorns will take quite a bit more time. If it takes more than 14 days, you might notice some fizzing going on. Just ignore it, and continue to process. As soon as the nuts are tannin free and ready, dry them.

At this point, you can use the nuts immediately in things such as soup or pickles. I’ll often freeze them in zip lock bags and use them in recipes.

But if you want flour, you’ll have to dry them.

DRYING There’s no real trick to drying the bits. Place them on a baking sheet and put them in the oven at a low heat. Stir them every half hour or so, until they are bone dry. You can use a dehydrator, if you have one. Once the bits are dry, store them in the freezer. If you leave any moisture in them and try to store them on the shelf, they will mold.

Even if bone dry, the fats and oils are unstable and will turn rancid if left out at room temperature for more than a few weeks.

Ground acorn flour used in waffles.

GRINDING FLOUR I haven’t found the perfect grinder to make a light fluffy flour yet. There is one at the Hispanic market that does an ok job, but it doesn’t give me the silky-soft texture that I’m really looking for.

It does leave me with a nice meal that is good for rustic breads and recipes such as acorn polenta.

You can also grind using your blender. The results aren’t perfect, but they are certainly usable. My friend Darryl reports that grinding the bits while frozen gives him silky flour.

I’m sure that there are grinders out there that will turn out beautiful, silky acorn flour, but I’m just as sure that they are very expensive. When I want a uniform finely ground flour, I go to a little extra trouble and do a sort of double grind method. I grind up the dried bits using my blender first, then transfer the course meal to a coffee grinder.

I use the espresso setting. Then I sift the flour through an old fashioned flour sifter, and throw the larger bits of meal back into the blender to start over. (Don’t be intimidated. It sounds complicated but it goes quickly.)

It’s a little more work, but if you’ve gone to the trouble of making this amazing flour, spending these few extra minutes are worth it in terms of texture and appearance. But if you’re at the point where you just want this whole process to be over (hey, some folks are like that), just use your blender and move on to your recipe.

Make sure that you store your finished flour in the freezer to keep the oils stable and discourage insects. W

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One Foragers Review

THE PITEBA NUT OIL EXPELLER I tend to do things the old fashioned way. I’m rarely in a hurry and find that a ‘new’ way of doing something might be faster, but it usually costs more. But when a friend offered to trade me his brand new, still in the original packaging Piteba nut oil expeller, for a couple of boxes of shotgun shells, I jumped. I have wanted to try one of these expellers for a while.

The first thing that I noticed was the instructions were translated into English, which can be confusing. That really didn’t matter because there are plenty of videos on the ‘net showing how to put the expeller together and once I saw how it worked, it went together easily. The second problem was that one of the washers was missing from the kit. Still, washers are plentiful around here, so I just dug one out of the shop and used it.

From the Piteba website: “The PITEBA oil press (expeller) is manually operated. The press has been developed for oil seeds and nuts, such as walnuts, coconuts, sunflower seed, sesame, groundnuts and many other oil seeds. All seeds and nuts with more than 25% oil can be processed with the standard equipment. Despite the slight heating with a small burner the oil can still be considered as cold pressed. The clean oil clarifies in a few days and can then be decanted.

No need for filtration. The standard press can also be used to produce a nut paste such as peanutbutter and marzipan. The website contains useful tips concerning soap making, floating candles, different methods of mounting of the press etc.”

Then came some problems that were harder to deal with. I had a good solid surface to bolt it to out on the patio, but I’m right in the middle of remodeling my bedroom and didn’t really want it in the way of all the dry wall that was going back and forth. I thought I’d just use ‘C’-clamps to hold it down. That doesn’t work, because the only available platform to anchor it with the clamp also has to hold the oil lamp and the oil container.

You must bolt the press down.

The ability to squeeze the oil out of nuts and seeds is a boon to a forager, adding flavor and calories to a meal. Black walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, acorns all have delicious oils in them, waiting to be released and the possibilities for their use are endless. I haven’t had much luck boiling them out, which leaves a few presses available on the market, but a plethora of plans for them available on the internet.

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The expeller doesn’t come with a hopper to feed the nuts and seeds. The instructions suggested cutting up a liter bottle (the sort that holds soda).

You’d be hard pressed to find such a bottle at my house, but I did have a 12 oz. water bottle, which I cut up to use as a hopper. The hopper doesn’t screw into the opening; it just sits there, and can be dislodged easily, spilling your seeds.

The expeller also doesn’t come with any sort of a container to hold the oil as it runs out. Finding something that will fit in that space is not easy. I finally found a plastic cup that had a previous life as a toothpick holder that would fit into the allotted space. You’ll also need to stick a bowl at the end to catch the pressed ‘cake’, which isn’t a big deal.

I can’t imagine that anyone would actually attempt to use this indoors, but if you do, be prepared for quite a bit of smoke from the oil lamp. Heat keeps the cake pliable in the screw.

If you blow out the flame, be prepared to clean out the screw quickly. The cake will solidify like cement, if you don’t. Although I kept trimming the wick, there was enough flame that if I had used a one liter bottle as a hopper, I think it would have melted the plastic.

It takes a lot of force to turn the crank, so make sure that you have bolted the press down on a very sturdy surface.

So how did it work? For 2 cups of sunflower seeds, I got less than an ounce of oil. The acorn batch was about the same. Walnuts gave me a little more oil, closer to 1.5 ounces.

For one or two people, getting oil for flavoring a salad dressing, I think this press would be acceptable. But for a group of people, or to have enough oil to use for multiple tasks, I was disappointed. To meet our nutritional needs, it’s important that we don’t expend more calories than we take in. W

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Hidden Fruits

By Merriwether

Welcome, friend, to views of foraging from another angle. We all know the nutritional bonuses of wild foods and the exercise we get in collecting it. Foragers are a healthy lot, by nature.

But you know what? It’s even better for you than you realize. Come learn how you are helping your mind, body, and spirit as you walk the forager’s path. Come learn the hidden fruits of your passion.

THE SURPRISING WAY FORAGING PREPARES YOU FOR DISASTER Hurricane Ike ripped through our Houston neighborhood, blowing down trees, tearing up roofs, and knocking out the power. Six days later when the power came back on all the neighbors commented that it was one of the best weeks of their lives! How could this be?

A lot of people get into foraging from the standpoint of preparedness. If some disaster shuts down stores for a while they want to know what plants they and their family can eat to survive. My parents got through the Great Depression in part by tapping the wild foods around them. Tales from current war-torn areas speak of all the trees, shrubs, and weeds disappearing into the stomachs of starving people. But the nutritional/ calorie aspect of foraging isn’t what I want to discuss. Did you know foraging can make your community more close-knit?

Most states have laws against harvesting plant material without the landowner’s permission and completely ban it in public areas. To be an ethical forager you must talk to friends, family, neighbors, and strangers to get permission to reap the edible and medicinal plants from their property. Neighbors are a great source of wild foods. I spent a lot of time cultivating relationships with many the neighbors for blocks around 12

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our 500-house subdivision so that I could harvest the edible weeds and landscaping plants they unknowingly had in their yards.

Nightly walks after supper collecting free foods soon turned me into “The Guy”. The Guy knows everyone, is friends with everyone, and more importantly can connect people. If someone needed a special tool they called me and I hooked them up with someone from whom they could borrow it. If someone needed a pet sitter I knew which families had trustworthy kids wanting to make a few bucks. If something was needed, I knew who had it and made the connection. After doing this for years the neighborhood was linked together in a web of mutual assistance. I wasn’t needed much as the go-between, people had met their neighbors and would just call them up directly unless it was a really odd request.

A few days before the hurricane hit I organized a neighborhood meeting. Preparedness information was exchanged and work parties were organized to help people prepare their yards and homes for the coming onslaught. Hunters in the neighborhood lent out walkies-talkies so that every house could call for help if needed. People arranged to share generators with each other.

People with first aid skills were identified. By the time the hurricane hit we were all ready.

The power went out about 1 AM as transformer after transformer exploded in purple flashes.

The next morning brought flooded and blocked streets, there was no way to get into or out of our neighborhood. The storm ended in mid-afternoon and everyone came out of their shelters to assess the damage… and then got to work fixing it.

Neighbors formed up work crews to clear the downed trees blocking roads and to help people tarp roofs. A professional cook assessed everyone’s freezers and fridges, then planned how to

cook the defrosting food into large, community meals. For five days we all worked together to undo hurricane Ike’s damage. For five nights we all partied together under lanterns and candles.

The power came back on the afternoon of sixth day. The plan that night was to deep-fry several turkeys for the communal meal. A cheer went up when we realized the power was on…and then a voice asked, “We’re still all going to get together for supper tonight, right?”

To be an ethical forager you MUST talk to people.

The more people you talk to the bigger your sphere of influence becomes. This sphere becomes a large safety net, first just for you but as the sphere grows it becomes a web with many links and connections. These connections are what get you through disaster just as much as knowing which weeds you can eat. W

Photos by Merriwether

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Preserving Summer Sunshine with Shrubs Preserving food in jars or tins under pressure is a relatively new concept. Until the 20th century almost everything was dried or preserved in crocks. And preserving almost always meant that what you started with changed into something else. Cabbage became sauerkraut. Milk became cheese. Shrubs became fruit vinegar.

Wait. They preserved trees?

No, not that kind of shrub. A shrub started off simply as excess fruit, preserved in crocks with

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sugar and vinegar. As the fruit macerated, the syrup was saved, diluted with water and was served as a refreshing drink. If you use unpasteurized vinegar (such as Bragg’s or a homemade one) the yeasts on the fruit will convert the sugar into alcohol and the acid bactar from the vinegar changes the alcohol into more vinegar. You’ll end up with amazing fruity vinegar.

But that’s only if you can stop drinking it as a shrub first. I have trouble with that.

Some people don’t like ‘vinegar-y drinks’. I don’t suffer from that problem, but if you do, then shrubs probably aren’t for you. But for the rest of us, there are several ways to make them. You can use the cold method (which I prefer, because I think the flavor is brighter) or the heated method which is actually faster. You can also use a reverse order and infuse your fruit into the vinegar first, but it takes longer, so I usually don’t do that.

COLD METHOD You’ll use equal parts of fruit, sugar and vinegar.

Just about any juicy fruit will work. Peaches, berries, apricots, even pineapple. I really like to play with the flavors, so I add aromatic herbs as well; basil, rosemary, fir tips, lemon grass.

I’ve only used plain old white sugar. You could use the darker sugars, but I think that they change the beautiful flavor of the fruit, so I don’t.

Vinegar. Here’s another place to play. I like to use balsamic types and apple cider vinegar. But try your homemade vinegar or your personal favorite.

Crush the fruit slightly. Add the sugar and stir.

Cover and let sit for 24 to 48 hours to macerate.

Gently strain the fruit pulp out and use it up elsewhere in recipes. Add the vinegar to the reserved liquid. There may be some undissolved sugar, just add it in. Eventually the vinegar will break it down. Just give your shrub a gentle shake every day until it mixes into solution.

HOW TO USE YOUR SHRUB: The syrup is pretty intense. I usually cut it with still or sparkling water. You can also use it as a base for cocktails. Adding a few drops of bitters to the cocktail will help bring out the depth of the fruit.

If you’ve used unpasteurized vinegar, in a few months you’ll have the most amazing fruit vinegar which is terrific for holiday gifts. W

I usually let the shrub sit for a week before I start using it to let the flavors blend.

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS & FORAGERS Editor HEATHER PIER Heather began foraging with her mother as a child. She took way too many science classes in college and now mixes her knowledge of chemistry, her love of plants and vintage recipes together in the kitchen.

pg 12, 13 HIDDEN FRUITS by Merriwether Forager, Father, Husband, Scientist.

Merriwether doesn’t just burn his candles at both ends, he smashes them into bits and then hits the pieces with a flamethrower. His current home is Houston, TX where his days are spent creating environmentally friendly chemicals to help the oil industry, evenings are family time, and weekends are given to introducing the forgotten world of edible & medicinal wild plants to students across Texas as well as other places weeds do grow.

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