Acorns...A Childhood Dream

When I was a youngun', I read My Side of the Mountain and thought, "Man-o-man...one day I want to hollow out my own tree in the woods, cure me some deer skin, and fill my food stores with acorns so that I can too enjoy acorn flour pancakes." I read and reread that book, scheming and planning, memorizing the technique for acorn collection and storage because you never know when you might need to know how to deal with acorns.

Well low and behold, that day has come and acorn collection time is upon us.

My rationale for what you will soon see was a foolish endeavor was that going from this

To these fine products was as simple as

Pick and dry...and we have dried apples!

Pick and boil...and we have apple syrup!

And so off we headed into the world of acorn processing. 

Damn those apocalyptic, end of world blogger types who swear up and down that acorns are well worth the time it takes to process squirrel fodder. And damn them again for claiming that six changes of water will take your acorns from bitter, inedible nuggets of nastiness to healthy, delicious, satisfying treats. It has been six weeks and we still aren't there. 

Once again, the thing that rankles me is the blogosphere, where folks claim that this acorn processing stuff rocks. Really? I just have to set the record straight, dammit. 

So here is what you get if you decide that you need to play with acorns.

First you have to pick them up which, if you have middle schoolers, is potentially embarrassing. Thus, I recommend the first step in this process very highly. There are any number of different kinds of oak trees and even, so they say, a sweet oak that drops acorns that need hardly any processing but I think that might be a load of kaka. 

The next step. getting the acorns out of their shells part, also ranked pretty high on the fun-stuff-to-do-when-you-have-no-money scale. It got high marks because you get to smash stuff with hammers. Next, though, comes the poopy water stage.

Yup, that muck comes out of acorns (and yes, there are acorns in there, under the muck) through a process called leeching, which involves lots of boiling water and baking soda. Is it any wonder our forefathers decided pretty quickly that importing flour from Europe was the way to go? 

You get about six weeks of poopy water before the acorns stop being so full of tannin that they constipate you and their bitterness curls your toes. Then the water looks like this instead:

 Many hours of drying in the dehydrator and they start to look like mouse turds.

And they then can be thrown in a jar and placed in the cupboard until the trauma of having undergone this experience begins to fade.

I think the next thing you are supposed to do is grind them into a sort of acorn meal and make things out of them--like bread, noodles, and coffee (and My Side of the Mountain pancakes). Really! However, the same idiots who swore that this whole process would take days are also the ones who posted recipes for all that stuff so we have yet to eat these shriveled, blackened nuggets.

Anyone in the market for some acorns?

How to Eat on $65 a Week (and Not Develop Scurvy)

I keep running across all of these "how to save a bazillion bucks" blogs these days. 

We have a love-hate relationship. 

The blog's author always posts a picture of herself in a sidebar looking like the all-American girl. Their peaches and cream complexions are probably because, with all of the wholesome recipes and money saving tips they offer, they can go to the spa each morning, leaving the kids with nannies. And they can then hit the gym before lunch. I hate them all. 

happymoneysaver.com...this woman gave us our recipe
for homemade laundry soap at $.02 a load. And she
manages to look stunning while doing it. Damn her.

keephomesimple.blogspot.com...I love this woman's
one-hour French bread recipe. She raises kids, cooks
wholesome meals, and looks like June Cleaver. Every day.

fivehearthome.com...thanks to this woman we have
healthy, no-cook granola bars until the kids find them and eat
them all (their new record--three hours). In case you haven't
figured it out yet, her name is Samantha. Her life is perfect.

Their houses always abound with love. They describe their kids as "sweet, loving, energetic, beautiful," and their past-times usually include reading something (like home-making magazines, but never smutty novels), baking, church, and servicing her husband who is, invariably, her soul mate. *Retch*

And yet, for all of my animosity, I need to thank these blogging ladies because they are the reason we are not eating oatmeal every night for dinner. And they are also the reason, in part, that our grocery bill is so low.  They just have so many darn good ideas on saving a buck. Gotta pay for those facials somehow.

I was talking to my sister this week and she was so impressed at how cheaply we are eating but then, when I explained how we are eating so cheaply, she was repulsed which, of course, means that these tips must be blog-worthy.

How to Eat on $65 a Week (and not develop scurvy)

1. Eat cabbage...lots of cabbage.

. 

Cabbage is frickin' cheap. And you can turn it into cabbage soup, cabbage rolls, cabbage salad, cabbage fritters, cabbage meatballs, cabbage curry. The downside is that it is hard to disguise as anything but cabbage. 

The bite out of our budget: 85 cents apiece. 

Meal value: 3-5 meals can be squeezed from a single cabbage. 

Complaint level: 8/10 due to its gaseous qualities.

2. Use TVP as a filler anytime you serve ground meat.

I know, it looks like breakfast cereal...or cat vomit...depending on your age and level of tact. But it is in fact some kind of dried stuff that, when you add it to meat, makes your food budget go a long way. Like little dried flakes of magic. 

The bite out of our budget: Infinitesimal

Meal value: Seemingly infinite

Complaint level: 0/10 if they don't see it going into their food, 10/10 if they do. TVP gets an 11/10 if they fail to make the cat vomit connection.

3. Sop off the government.

I know, I know...the dole is naughty. But my kids eat a lot. So T and I sat down and calculated that we could save approximately $100 a week if we would just sign them up for government lunch at school. So we did. 

The bite out of our budget: There is free lunch. Thank you US taxpayers.

Meal value: 15/week

Complaint level: 0/10. They like free lunch because it guarantees pizza once a week. We will deal with the resulting obesity later.

4. Sop off the neighbors...then make stuff.

Man, everyone here has fruit trees that they don't pick. Right now, it is don't-pick-your-apples season with a few hangers-on from don't-pick-your-pears season. It looks like we will soon be heading into don't-pick-your-crab-apples season.

The fruits of our latest sopping.

Apple jelly made from the neighbor's apples

The bite out of our budget: Thanks to child labor, nada.

Meal value: 5/week...there's apple fritters, apple jam, apple sauce, apple pie, apple crisp, apple cake, apple slices for snack... 

Complaint level: 1/10. No one complains about dessert, but there have been some complaints about the occasional worm and the rot level encountered when picking. It will come out later in counselling.

5. Shop at Aldi and eschew organics

Not as good as Walmart for entertainment value, but
darn cheap so long as you keep your expectations low.

I know, you're going to say that we are probably setting ourselves up for chronic diseases later while simultaneously destroying the planet, but buying conventional saves in the short run, and right now we are all about the short run. On top of that, Aldi, according to a number of hardcore, money saving bloggers, is nothing less than the devil's work. 

But Aldi has my heart because, if you are not overly picky about labels, the mountains of pre-packaged foodstuffs that you have to navigate around to find the bargains, and the fact that you have to USE YOUR OWN BAGS **gasp** it is cheap.

Signing off from the world of "ain't got no money"...

Povertingly yours,

Rachel