Halfway through October I am once again honored to present the Wild Edible Notebook, my journal-style tale of select plants. This fifth issue is about acorns. It includes an entry about my own experience processing and preparing a bounty of Colorado acorns (yes, we have acorns) as well as a Wisconsin acorn neophyte’s adventures with her back yard bur oak. The accounts feature interviews with none other than wild food guru, Samuel Thayer. There are also reviews of Thayer’s two books, Nature’s Garden (2010) and The Forager’s Harvest (2006) as well as Hank Shaw’s recently-released book, Hunt, Gather, Cook (2011). As you can see from the cover at right, I went hogwild with InDesign’s pencil tool for this issue.
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EDITED 10.7.13 to reflect the new download procedures.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to find your website & sign up for your notebooks. I’m really looking forward to digging into your posts. Yay! How would I go about getting past releases of your notebooks?
I want to join your wild edible notebook.
Thanks a lot.
Joris
Hi Sarah, Sorry for the delayed response but I blame nature for sending Alaska’s blizzardcane this way and putting us out of power for a few… If you sign up for the notebook, you get access to all of them from a common download page. Cheers!
Hi Joris, Awesome! So glad! Fill out the form at the bottom of the page to join:)
Looks interesting, living in the Ozarks, there are a plethera of oaks, which are edible, which are not?
@Katherine: All of ’em! But keep in mind you have to leach the tannins out of them so it’s a little bit of a process. I recount how I do it in my entry, Zen & the Art of Acorn Processing. Or see Sam Thayer’s book, Nature’s Garden, for all the gory details on acorn collecting & processing as well as descriptions of the major types of oaks and their acorns’ characteristics.
I am always interested in learning how to find and use edible wild food…Thanks for all the info.
I’m interested to see whether you asked your mother to save the husks for you–aren’t they valuable medicinally?
Hi Laura, Are you talking about the black walnut husks? She didn’t, but I got my own black walnuts shortly after that and tinctured the hulls. Yes, they have medicinal value that I just beginning to learn about myself. Sincerely-e