To bake a bread...

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

     – Matthew 5:42 (KJV)

 

She entered Senhor João’s garden and dropped the bucket full of acorns on the ground behind him, causing him to jump at the unexpected noise. He turned and said boa tarde, good afternoon.

“Will you teach me to make acorn bread?” she asked eagerly.

“No!” he replied sharply.

Shock. But… why? “Please!” she pleased, eyes filling wet.

He looked long at her, and it came, the rain, let it fall as it did from her and on her, on him, as it falls on us all. He saw the gentle rain, washing him, stripping slowly the mask of his reluctance, leaving the naked skin of his nakedly apprehensive face.

Well… I don’t know, he came again, the waters washing him with pure intent. I’m not supposed to.

What? said she, surprised. But you said, you told me, all the things, delicious to make from these…

… seeds of life he whispered quietly…

and you refuse but why not fair the cupboards bare and my mother oh so fears

… as do we all in these times, softly…

won’t you show me the way, I need the truth, light the fire and let us bake the bread and break the bread, oh please old father my father she screamed in flash and bang and blood in the night and flight so far away away away in a land far far from home

… and the rain fell, down on him, a torrent, crushing and carrying him in the flood across the dry lands of death, the waters deep in death the depth of suffering and silence of lambs where there should be laughter, be play in the free meadows of light…

and says who forbids your mother that’s rich the cakes the cookies the braided breads of holidays high on the altar of Light now dark and fading, despairing

… he watched her silently.

After a while, she sneezed. Not a pleasant thing in a mask, really. Softly, sobbing: “I’m sorry. I thought… well… my mother has no work, and…”

… still he said nothing. She picked up her bucket to leave. As she turned, he said, “Wait. There’s a way.”

What? a little spark, hope, struck her heart and rose, singing her throat a little as she struggled to form the words in her still rudimentary Portuguese. Como?

“Well,” he said quietly. “I could induct you into the guild.”

Guild? What’s that?

It can be a lot of things, he told her, depending on the context. In my garden, it is a community of complementary plants around a principal tree. That’s part of permaculture’s teaching. But in this case, the society.

Society? Of what? her small voice a puzzle of crystalline fracture.

The secret society. Of alchemists.

An interlude, the author wakes after a night of trampling mares
and a dawn, gentle and loving --->

The names of good people have been changed to protect their privacy. For some bad ones, I've changed the names when I am no longer as angry with them as I once was, or if I do not wish to embarrass them or those close to them or descended from them. Or, if I think that some fool might try to sue me, maim me, or even kill me!

I'm a writer, not a Warrior, for all my dabbling in the Arts. 

Sometimes, the names of Evil remain unchanged, as I have no fear to speak ill of the dead, especially if they are well buried. Or of some living, who hide in the shadows still and are dead to me. The dead cannot sue, they can but haunt me in my dreams, and the worst of them do that already. May I haunt them back. 

Acorn preparation the easy way

In a recent Facebook post asking about tips for achieving more self-sufficiency, I responded that my recent return to an interest in acorns had led to discoveries which theoretically make us 100% self-sufficient for food if we care to be. Then I was asked 

to which I responded:

"Our acorns are quite low in tannins as I mentioned, so depending on what you're working with changes may be needed. I am having trouble sourcing bitter acorns here, so there it's more theory than verified practice.

"Completely forget all those stupid hot water (boiling methods). Forget the streams and toilet tank BS for the cold extraction methods.

"1. Shell acorns. The fastest method for this is roasting, but if you want to avoid that 

"(a1) dry for a while or in a desiccator and

"(b1) Cut lengthwise (wear butcher's gloves and use a narrow, long knife, employing the tip end as a fulcrum) and pry out the nut - a grapefruit spoon is the best aid I've found for difficult cases, and its serrations can be useful for scraping off bad bits

"OR, for roasting

"(a2) cut a lengthwise slit in the acorns, drop into water to soak for some hours (I sometimes use a modified olive slitting tube with two cutting vanes removed) and

"(b2) roast in a cast-iron pan over a campfire or in a fireplace for that nice smoked tang or roast for maybe 15-30 minutes in the oven at 230 degrees C or so; the roast is done when the slits open wide, some so much so that the nuts just fall out. Don't worry if the acorns become very dark, even black - they are carmelized, not burned usually - yum!

"2. Then taste the acorns, and if bitter, drop into water in a 1 gallon plastic water bottle or other container; soak and change water every half day or day, tasting each time until you feel that the debittering is completed to your satisfaction.

"3. Take the nuts, dry them briefly and grind them in blender, using a sieve/screen to sift the fine flour from the grits, the latter being a good form to roast as an ersatz coffee. Use fresh/moist within a week or so, dry it for longer storage at ambient temperature or freeze it for use months or years later (depending on your freezer conditions)...."

For the roasting method, that 1a2 step is very important! Acorns with a lot of moisture inside can burst explosively if there is nothing - like a cut in the nut - to allow steam to escape. And the uncut ones that don't burst often have their texture and taste ruined by excessive steaming inside the intact shell. With a cut, the shells will split wider and dry, so that acorn meats often simply fall out intact.

The first time I tried to roast acorns without cutting the shells was quite dramatic. Gaia, our Fila de São Miguel (like a Portuguese pit bull) is a terrifying dog who longs to hear the words Mate todos! ("kill them all") when I let her outside, but she was the terrified one with the shells bursting loudly inside our flimsy toaster oven. The trembling beast had to be sent outside to go hide in a kennel, and she did not ask to come back in that night. Harmat, my Wire-haired Viszla from a great breeder in hunting Hungary, just wanted to know where she could retrieve the shot birds.

In the meantime, I can get a couple kilograms of flour from acorns swept off the ground and processed fresh in about an hour, to make roasted nuts, crackers, dark breads of every kind, rich nut cheeses, meatless balls, delicious ersatz coffees and tea and more. A journalist friend recently blogged about John Lennon, who has been dead now about as long as he walked the earth, and I responded:

"... woke at 5 am, put on my robe and gathered acorns from the terrace as it rained, and as I washed and slit the fresh nuts to prepare for roasting in the fireplace, to open them up, make them easy to shell and convert to acorn flour, the main part of our breads and other dishes for a few weeks now, I found myself singing "Imagine" quietly as I pictured industrialized monoculture fields of wheat gone from our landscapes, replaced by groves of oaks in guild permacultures, once again giving renewable wood for fuel, crafts and construction, cork bark to keep us warm in insulated walls and to hold our fruit harvest wines in their flasks, and producing their regular crops of acorn grains above, squashes and hops (for acorn beer) climbing those trees and the understories of lesser trees, fruit bushes, herbs and fiber plants spread below and between them, asparagus close in and peeking through shrub twigs, truffles below the earth, and the sounds of a thousand birds at every level of branches and across the ground. Imagine that. It's easy if you try."