Acorns are the single most important food stock in California.
They are enjoyed by First Californians from coast to coast. And it was traded throughout the state and beyond. We all share this heritage, even though we have different stories, songs, and journeys.
While the First Californians are famous for eating acorns; we are not the only people in the world who gather and process acorns for food.
As we develop the equipment necessary to process the acorns we harvested during our First Annual Acorn Harvest en masse, we wanted to tell you more about the global significance of acorns.
The Global Significance of Acorns
Acorns are eaten in North America, Europe, and Asia. China is a major manufacturer of acorn harvesting and processing equipment. Their largest customer is Korea. Where acorns are a major food stock, so common that acorns are part of the pop culture.
Yeah, I totally used TikTok as a source. “Acorn Caricature” is so hot right now!
But acorns aren’t just a recent trend. Acorns have been a part of Korean pop culture for a long time.
Check out this children’s book, “Kindergarten in acorn village”; which is a popular and well-known series:
But it’s not just Korean culture that celebrates the acorn.
Here is an eminently relevant article published in the National Library of Medicine: “Food Security beyond Cereals: A Cross-Geographical Comparative Study on Acorn Bread Heritage in the Mediterranean and the Middle East“.
Anecdotally: The dude at a gas station near our office gave me his mother’s recipe for Berber Acorn Bread, when I told him what I was working on. He shared with me that acorn bread was something he ate as a child, and shared his fond memories of gathering and processing acorns.
When I brought him an acorn from a Coast Live Oak, he was so used to the sweet acorns of his homeland that he immediately opened the acorn to eat it–not realizing that this acorn is high in tannin and very bitter. But it was his experience that influenced his belief that all acorns were ready to eat, because they are in the place he’s from.
This is all to say that acorns are global. And they are something which can tie us together when we need it most.
Foodways are intersected by the acorn, not the other way around.
This is why we all have an innate fascination with acorns. Because we all share an ancestral urge to eat them!
For our purposes, we’re going to be processing acorns en masse, in an effort to produce food for as many people as possible.
Yes, it’s true that some of the most traditional ways to process acorns include soaking acorns in flowing water.
Most processing methods use water directly from rivers, streams, and springs.
But we don’t have free flowing bodies of clean water anymore. We have culverts, canals, aquaducts, and flumes. And they’re full of trash, industrial (agricultural, manufacturing) runoff, and pollutants like sewage, and microplastics.
So, we couldn’t show you how to do it traditionally, even if we wanted to. Because it’s not safe.
Anyone who tells you different is probably gonna pull out a glass jar, or some coffee filters to process acorns in their kitchen, anyway–and that’s not “traditional”, either.
So let’s just lay this one to rest and make peace with the fact that the world has changed [is continuing to change] and it behooves us to adapt accordingly.
None of this makes the acorn less special, or our mission less important.
It means that we can share our enthusiasm and celebrate the reopening of indigenous foodways with more people!
And there’s nothing better than sharing something with people who appreciate it as much as you do.
Modern Acorn Processing Techniques are Well-Documented
There is an enormous amount of literature and video available for modern acorn processing techniques to make small amounts of acorn flour. Not the least of which is this cool open source zine called “Eating Acorns: A Guide to Processing Acorns for Use as Food” by Mary Hatch.
There’s also a CSU Sacramento Museum of Anthropology Publication called “Past and Present Acorn Use in Native California”. And even cookbooks, like “Acorns and Eat’em: A How-To Vegetarian Acorn Cookbook“
We recommend this guide to Leaching Acorns by Sara Calvosa Olson, the author of “Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen“
These are the kinds of Acorn Processing methods we will show you during our Public Acorn Processing Workshops:
Modern, relevant, acorn processing techniques you can enjoy in your own kitchen, with readily available tools and supplies.
While those are good for small amounts. We’re going to be processing much larger quantities.
We are offering two types of Acorn Processing Events.
The first one (listed above) is our public workshop. We are also running production workshops.
Production workshops will be focused on producing the Acorn Flour and Acorn Meal we’ll actually offer and distribute to Indigenous Communities, and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Learn more about how we will accomplish this task by volunteering to help us process the acorns we’ve harvested.
2025 Acorn Process Signup Form is here.
