Making Acorn Flour

A few days ago, D took the girls on a hike and they gathered acorns. He hasn't had a chance to prepare them yet, so the girls and I did it today. We shelled them, ground them into flour, rinsed it to get all of the tannic acid off, and now the flour is drying. We're going to use it in our pancakes tomorrow. We are all really glad we don't have to prepare them like the Native Americans used to. It's a lot easier with a food processor than it would be with a mortar and pestle! 

Picture from http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Acorn-Flour

 
This led to discussing a lot of different things while we shelled the acorns.  We talked about where our ancestors came from (England, France, Italy, Ireland and many other places), and I showed them on the globe.  We talked about how there were already people living here when our ancestors came.  While discussing how they wouldn't be able to just go to the store to buy food, but that grinding acorns like this would be a matter of either having food or not, we talked about other things they ate, like fish and deer.  E mentioned that sometimes hunting deer is illegal, which led to talking about government, and how there was no government then to say that hunting was illegal.  We talked about what the Native Americans wore, and looked up pictures of their clothes.  Then I told them that we see Native Americans every time we leave the house (there is a Rancheria in our town), and that they don't wear the traditional clothes very often anymore, but dress and look just like us.