For the first class of the unit, the fourth and fifth grade chefs learned about the acorn as a universal and important food source for Indigenous peoples almost everywhere in present-day California, with the exception of the desert. Acorn gathering season is September and October, so students were able to touch and observe locally gathered acorns from the East Bay.
In the classroom, we watched a video of a North Fork Mono and Chukchansi woman known as “the acorn lady,” Lois Conner Bohna, preparing acorn and talking about the steps and tools used to process acorn into food.
In the kitchen, we made strawberry acorn pancakes with acorn flour produced in Nevada County, about 150 miles from our school. It was fun to be back in community cooking together, and the pancakes were popular, especially with loads of maple syrup (a nod to the Indigenous foodways of the Northeast!) on top.
