From Great Oaks

I have mentioned before that our house is surrounded by alzinas, a type of evergreen oak. The trees must date from the time the house was built which makes them about 300 years old.

If the harvest of Oka from yesterday failed to impress me, in the light of meagre returns, the same cannot be said of the acorns.

They rain from the skies in abundance, chattering out a tattoo on the roof of the cars, providing a satisfying crunch underfoot, choking the filters of the pool and giving the fish tank an tannin tinted murky colour.

With this profusion should come wealth, but no one can tell me of any uses for them apart from tannin dying although I did find the following on the net:

Things You'll Need
?Cookie sheet
?Pliers or a nutcracker
?Bowl
Instructions
1 Place your collected acorns on a cookie sheet and set them out in the sun to dry out. The sun stops mold from growing on the acorns.?
2 Pop off the top of the acorn, which looks like a little hat. Use a pair of pliers or a nutcracker to remove the outer shell of the acorn. The flesh will be yellowish-beige in color
?3 Grind the acorns in a food grinder and place them in a glass bowl.??
4 Leach your ground acorns to remove the tannins that make the acorns taste bitter. This is done by pouring boiling water over the ground acorns and letting them sit for one hour.??
5 Drain the water from the glass bowl and repeat with fresh boiling water. You may have to do this another two or three times, just until the water no longer runs brown.??
6 Place your acorn meal back on a cookie sheet. Place the cookie sheet in the oven on the lowest setting. Check the acorn meal every 20 minutes to see if it has dried out, and crumble any meal that has begun to stick together.??
7 Grind your dried acorn meal one last time. Then it is ready to use in your favorite recipe.?


My clever subscribers must include at least one who has a recipe for acorn meal? It is a shame to let such a bounty go to waste!