It felt so good to be back in the kitchen classroom with our fourth and fifth graders this fall after a long delay! We will spend the semester exploring Indigenous foodways, and our first class was all about the acorn, an important food staple for many Native peoples on the land we now call California.
In the classroom, we passed out a variety of acorns that were gathered on a recent hike in the East Bay so students could examine them with their hands. Some were big and the color of coffee; others were slender and pale green; most of them had caps that easily fell off, indicating their ripeness. September and October is acorn season; it’s a wonderful time to forage for them all over the Bay Area if you find yourself in the presence of oak trees. We watched a North Fork Mono cultural educator named Lois Conner Bohna share about the importance of acorn to her people and illustrate the labor-intensive process Indigenous people use to transform the hard, tannic fruit into a source of sustenance and nourishment.
In the kitchen, we made strawberry acorn pancakes using local, handmade acorn flour. Everyone got right to work slicing strawberries and mixing the batter as a team. The chefs were excellent at flipping the pancakes at just the right moment when one side was nicely browned. When both sides of each pancake were golden and cooked, we stacked them up and served them warm and topped with maple syrup. The acorn has a deep, nutty flavor most of us had never tasted before. It is truly an ancient, special treat.
