Eating Ginkgo Nuts, Making Acorn Flour, and Spotting Owls
2020 was not an easy year. Everything shut down all over the world. Travel plans were canceled, people were isolated, many people had friends and loved ones get sick and die. It was (and still is in a lot of ways), a terrifying time. It’s hard to look back and find the highlights in such a bleak year, and yet they are there. Maybe they stand out a bit brighter from the bleak background, and maybe it takes less for something to be a highlight, but there are shimmers and glimmers nonetheless. And I think it is important to reflect on them: it’s like polishing them to make them gleam, and make the whole bleak year seem brighter in retrospect.
These highlights took place in the fall, not coincidentally because that is when I started walking regularly. My daughter started a new school — which was blessedly open most days — and after dropping her off in the mornings instead of returning home (and back to bed) I stopped at one of the two nearby parks. I was egged on by the incredible beauty of this fall: the brilliantly bright colors that seemed to start early and last longer than usual. Reds, oranges, and golds that I haven’t seen since childhood, which in itself was a highlight. So I guess that’s my first highlight: the colors of fall, 2020.
Mostly I’d walk in mornings, but one day a week I’d walk in the afternoon, because though E had a virtual school day Wednesday, she still had soccer practice, so I’d drop her off and go on my walk. As I was turning the corner onto a trail in the woods a huge bird alighted from the ground in front of me to a low branch on a tree overhead. Thinking it was a hawk I glanced up, but found two huge round brown eyes glaring back at me: a barred owl. And one who seemed angry I had interrupted its meal. As I held its stare I wondered, “Is it mad? Is it going to fly at me, talons out?” I took a chance and glanced down to see if I could see what it might have left behind, and when I looked back up it had flown — totally silently — to a slightly higher branch, a little further back. Still, it was clearly visible, so I pulled out my phone to take a picture, and I just stood there, admiring this beautiful bird in the bright light of an autumn afternoon.
I explored a lot of trails in this park that I’d never explored before. I loved and often took one particularly narrow windy little path, and on the one day I was able to cajole my daughter into joining me for a weekend walk, some bright white mushrooms caught my eye. Lumpy and irregular, I knew right away what they were: aborted entoloma. My late husband had been an expert at spotting these. In fact, he had an amazing eye for finding all kinds of mushrooms and birds. He didn’t enjoy birding as I do, but when I could convince him to join me on a bird walk I saw so much more because of his incredible eye. My daughter was impatient so I scrambled on the hillside and filled my jacket pocket with the find, and later had a delicious snack of sauteed mushrooms.
As the days continued the acorns began dropping. I’d have to be careful not to park under an oak tree. Tiny acorns, large acorns, acorns all sizes and shapes. I mentioned to someone that I’d tried to make acorn flour once, but I overboiled the nuts and they were soggy, yet still bitter. My friend wanted to make acorn flour as well. Another friend mentioned that burr oak acorns were the best to use: not only were the acorns large and meaty, but they had the least bitter tannins to leach out. And she happened to know where a great big burr oak tree was, and she’d just seen that under it were hundreds of acorns. The three of us met at the park, walked to the oak tree, and stood under it, at the acorn-less ground! The city had just been there and vacuumed them all up. She found a few furry empty caps, but it was enough for me to realize that I’d seen these acorns before! Disappointed and sadly holding our empty baskets, she offered to take us to her favorite Grandfather Ginkgo tree. We walked the little distance and suddenly our spirits were uplifted by a huge beautiful ancient golden ginkgo tree. The branches were covered with golden leaves, yet the ground under the tree was also a carpet of golden leaves. The trunk was so wide it would take the three of us holding hands to surround it (but we didn’t, because we were keeping our physical distance!)
We filled our baskets with the golden leaves, to take them home and tincture. A squirrel came down and joined us, eating her lunch sitting on a root near us. We lay back on the ground and looked up through the branches at the golden sky, and together sang a joyful song: “we are opening up in sweet surrender…”
I was telling another friend about this tree, and she wanted to see it so a couple days later I was back, gazing at the gorgeous grandfather tree. Then we walked around the park and discovered many other ginkgos, some female and dropping the stinky yellow fruits. I love stepping on the fruit and feeling them squish and pop beneath my shoe. Then I noticed among all the fruit some white nuts that were already out of the fruit somehow. Small and hard, they looked like little pistachios. The fruit was stinky, but these nuts were fine, so once again I filled my pockets.
I got home and watched some videos, decided to try three methods of cooking, watched the nuts turn from pale yellow to bright fluorescent green as they cooked, and sampled the most delicious delicacy imaginable!
And yet, I didn’t want to give up on the acorns. But fall was pressing on, and the acorns were dropped and being cleared away but the city and/or the massive squirrel population. But one day I was taking a new route in a park, down a winding road closed to traffic, and I came across burr oak trees whose acorns still filled the ground beneath them. I couldn’t believe my luck. This time I had a little nylon backpack with me, so I collected some acorns. Cracking them proved time consuming, even though these nuts were big and easy to extract. I soaked them in boiled water rather than boiling them so as not to overcook as I had done before. I changed the water a few times, ground them a bit in a food processor, then roasted them on low heat until they were dry and lightly browned. I processed them more until it became flour. It smelled rich, like caramel. I added flax seed, water, and baking powder and cooked a simple pancake, served it with syrup, and it was absolutely lush: rich, caramel, sweet deliciousness.
At that same park there is a hollow tree which grows next to the trail but leans away from it. A few years ago, when my husband was still alive, we used to see a little Eastern screech owl sunning itself in the opening of the hollow. One day it became disturbed by the onlookers, began rocking back and forth, and made its way like that back down into the tree. It was so fun to see! But I haven’t seen it there in years. Someone said some kids banged on the tree, it flew away and didn’t come back. But this year it’s back! Cute and tiny, often in the open crook of the tree, sleeping in the sun. I visit often and have fallen in love with it.
There were other highlights: camping at Pymatuning in Ohio, slipping away to a quiet beach in June, pick your own produce at Janoski’s Farm, the waterfalls at Rickett’s Glen, and learning about dosa mix and finding it at a local Indian grocery store. But the main highlight of 2020 was friends. Friends who wanted to see the owl, or gather ginkgo nuts, or just wanted to hike side by side in the woods. I reconnected with people I hadn’t seen in years (or a decade in one case!) I got to deepen connections with old friends, and even forge connections with new ones. Even though this year has been empty of visiting friends at their houses or having people over for tea or a meal, it has been richer in companionship and connection because of being outdoors, walking in the woods.
If you want to know more about the food I find in the woods, please join me over at Food Under Foot on Patreon. There you’ll find more posts about wild food, videos, podcasts, and a monthly full-color, digital magazine. Hope to see you there for more highlights in 2021!
