EASY HOMEMADE ACORN FLOUR.

Acorn flour is one of the most nutritious (and delicious) of forgeable foods out there––high protein, high mineral content. It is admittedly a fair amount of work, depending on your help and your equipment, but think of it this way: you didn't have to weed, cultivate or plant anything to get them. You are literally just harvesting and processing. So in terms of work, it is probably equally time intensive, or perhaps less time intensive, than your average cultivated grain.HARVESTING ACORNS Acorns are the seeds of oak trees. They can be found in parks, rest areas, cities and farms––by the boatload in masting years. Depending on region and tree species, acorns come in many different shapes and sizes. For us, we have several large white oak trees around that often give fat, healthy acorns. They start to drop sometime in the October, though I recommend waiting until after the first frost to harvest, because the first acorns that drop are often the less viable nuts. To make it easy, harvest acorns without holes in the side. The holes are from a tiny grub that eats, and ruins, the acorn. Once you have harvested all you would like, do a float test to check the rest of your acorns by pouring water over the group, and removing the floating nuts. Then stir and repeat. You will still find bad ones, but markedly less than without the float test.DRYINGSpread the acorns out on a baking sheet (or ten), then place them somewhere warm and well-ventilated to dry. We dry our either above our stove or in the greenhouse. Leave them for at least two to four weeks depending on heat and air flow.SHELLINGI hesitate to recommend our first shelling method, but you can find what works for you. Or maybe you have a method you'd like to recommend. Some people run it over with their cars, but without cement that wouldn't work for us as our driveway is dirt (or mud). Before we got a nutcracker through the KSU small farmers' grant, we cracked each acorn individually with a garlic press. This goes surprisingly quick, though it's a lot of work when dealing with five gallons of nuts. After we have cracked them all, we go back through and remove the nut. I enjoy this part of the process as it's another chance to remove bad nuts. It will take a couple days per bucket of acorns this way, but, you know, it's winter so what else do we have going on?LEACHINGLeaching is the process by which you use water to remove a mineral, nutrient or chemical. In the acorn's case, it's tannins you want to remove. Acorns are practically inedible before leaching, like eating underripe persimmons (voice of experience here). And there are many different ways to do it. I'll give you the two we know. First, there is the creek method––the lazy method. Stuff all the nuts into a permeable sack (pillow cases work), tie it to a tree in a clean creek or spring and let it sit there submerged for a month, checking on it regularly for holes. There is also cold-leaching which is essentially letting the nuts (or ground flour, which we do after leaching, but some do before) soak in cold water that is changed every few days, or percolated if you're fancy. Taste the nuts periodically to test for tannins––when you can tolerate it, you're good to go. As for hot leaching, I hear it's fast, but like most fast things in food, sacrifices flavor and texture so we don't bother. You can also neutralize the tannins with lime or lye, but we don't have any experience with that. If you do, please feel free to share!WASHING THEN DRYING AGAINAfter leaching we remove the acorns and, if done in a creek, wash them. While washing them we try to remove as much skin as possible, as the skin tends to maintain some of the tannin. Don't go nuts here––pun not necessarily intended. As far as I can tell, a little skin doesn't seem to make a big difference, plus it adds a little darkness to the color. You do still want to wash off any silt or dirt that has collected on your acorns, though, if you used the creek method. Dirt definitely makes a flavor, and textural, difference. Next, spread them out and, for creek leaching, dry them again for a week or so. This will help kill any bacteria, and also, make them easier to grind.GRINDING INTO FLOURPeople may use the leached acorns whole but typically they are ground for flour. Which means the job's not done yet. We didn't have a nice grinder when we first started doing acorns, but we are proof you don't need one. We had a meat grinder, which we ran them through first to break up the large chunks, then we finished the nuts in a coffee grinder. Et voila! Acorn flour!COOKING WITH ACORN FLOURAcorn flour is not wheat flour. You can use it for grits, for certain pie crusts, and mixed in with cookies or pancakes (our personal favorite) but it will not rise like wheat. Be creative. Try thickening a soup with it. Try the "grits". It doesn't make a great gravy (it separated when we tried it), but it does make a good thickener for sauces, or a nice addition to fry batter. You can use it all at once or think of it as a flavoring––go nuts! (Pun kind of intended that time.)General Notes:Ratio: One gallon of nuts makes roughly one quart of flourHarvest time: Around ten minutes per gallonActive time: Around one hour per gallonOverall Time: 15 to 60 days, depending on equipment and leaching methods-Jesse.

HOW IN THE WORLD TO USE ALL THIS OKRA.

We love okra. I'll even eat it fresh in the garden as I pick it. But we know that there are many people who do not love this crop. Perhaps it's the flavor, but more often than not it's the texture––affectionately described as "mucilaginous"––-and so they avoid eating it.But let's really look at okra, and try to find a way for everyone to love it as much as we do. It's a robustly flavored crop for how small it tends to be. It grows really well in our hot, dry summers. The flowers are unreal. And it's full of protein, vitamin K and vitamin C, to boot.People sometimes look at each vegetable in their CSA as an individual item to be used on its own. We like to look at our veggies as pieces of a puzzle that beg to be fit together. And okra is a relatively easy piece to fit. It can be used on its own, sure, but it can also be used as a thickening agent in soups, stews, chili, and sauces. Not to mention, when used like a seasoning, the flavor is almost indistinguishable from meat.Perhaps okra's most famous form is fried, respectfully. We love us some fried okra around here. Dip it in some buttermilk, batter it with some salt, black pepper, cornmeal and flour, then fry it in some lard and have a true southern treat. But that is hardly it's only use.Try tossing it in some olive oil, salt, cumin and pepper and baking it for 15 or 20 minutes (on 350) until toasty brown and soft. That's a great side dish, warm or cold. Or cut it up thin and add it to pasta ingredients. We sautéed some with yellow squash, tomatoes and sweet peppers for a pasta sauce the other night and it was outrageous––a word I may have literally never used before. You can also soak it in some teriyaki and dehydrate it as a snack. What about chopping it up and adding it to crab cakes or cornbread? We assure you, we will not stand in your way.If you just play around with it a bit, we're confident you will find you enjoy okra more than you realize.Okra fan already? Tell us how you use it.- Jesse.

HOW IN THE WORLD TO USE ALL THIS YELLOW SQUASH.

 The squash plant is a vigorous fellow (or fella, respectfully). Often, we'll get three of four yellow squash per plant, per picking (not per week). So if we have a hundred plants, by my math we wind up with at least half-a-bazillion squash every week (or thereabouts).And so we bring it all to market and at first the shareholders are excited to see something summery, then after a couple weeks they begin to look fatigued. "More squash, huh?"But squash is underrated. It has a lot of versatility in the kitchen––no doubt about that. It can be used raw, cooked, baked, fried, sautéed, stuffed, broiled, pickled, etc., etc., etc.. In fact, you can even use squash in cookies and breads like you would zucchini. The flavor is milder, but we like it that way.So let's just throw out some more specific dishes so you are not throwing out your squash. First, try grating it raw into a salad with some sweet peppers, lettuce, and tomatoes. Toss all that in a light vinaigrette, and top with some grated cheese. Whose to stop you from adding some bacon or a hard-boiled egg? Not us. Grating the squash, in fact, is a great (sorry) way to use it. Grate it into tacos, grate it into coleslaw, grate it overtop of a casserole. Just look at whatever you're cooking and think, "How can I squash this?"I really like to slice the squash and toss it in olive oil, salt and pepper then broil it or grill it. Let it crisp up a bit under the broiler. Add a little bit of thyme and grate some parmesan overtop then stick it back under the broiler for another minute. Get your camera ready––your kids will fight over it.Squash, like okra, also makes a good, dehydrated, veggie-chip snack. Slice it thin, dehydrate it, then toss it in some salt and herb mixture. There is so much flesh involved with this crop that the cook is only limited by his or her imagination when using it.Squash fan already? Tell us how you use it!- Jesse.

COOKING WITH STEW HENS AND ROOSTERS.

Culling ("removing animals from the herd") is part of raising chickens. It's not fun, but if you want to keep a healthy and affordable flock, it's a necessity. Sometimes it's an old hen who is no longer laying eggs (but is still eating feed). Sometimes it's one (or EIGHT) too many roosters, or even an aggressive rooster. Now, these birds are not like the chicken you get at the store. They're often fattier, with less meat on them, but tasty nonetheless. This week, it was a rooster that had to go (not as fatty as stew hens usually), but he didn't go to waste. The offal went to Wendell and the meat went into a soup. If you don't keep chickens, ask your farmer for a stew hen or rooster. I'm sure they will happily oblige.CULL CHICKEN SOUP RECIPE(makes 1/2 gallon of stock, 1/2 gallon of soup––serves four)Cook time: the longer the better (at least four hours)1 whole cull chicken cleaned3-4 medium size carrots, large diced2 medium size onions, large diced1/2 large bulb fennel, large diced4 quarts of veg stock or waterHerbs in bouquet garnis (recommended: thyme, bay leaf, rosemary)2 cups wine (optional)Mushrooms (optional)1/2 lbs of Pasta (penne is our favorite) or 1 lbs of potatoes (chopped)2 cloves garlic (chopped)Olive oilSea SaltGround pepperPut a large pot on medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil or lard. Once hot, sear the whole chicken until light gold on each side then remove whole chicken with tongs and set on plate. Add onions to pan and stir and cook until translucent. Then add fennel and carrots and stir and cook until all veggies are soft. Add whole chicken back in, then if you are going to add wine, add it now. Once the smell of alcohol has boiled off, about one or two minutes, add stock until chicken is covered. Place on lid and let simmer for several hours. Often, we'll cook the soup over the course of a whole day. If using a fatty stew hen, you may need to skim off some of the fat collecting on the surface. A little is OK. Before you add potatoes, and before you take the meat off the chicken bones, but after several hours of cooking, remove half the soup and freeze for chicken broth for another day (we always try and cook for at least two meals, or in this case, a possible sick day). Add potatoes two hours before serving, or pasta thirty minutes before. Add herbs and garlic an hour before serving.When serving, carefully remove chicken and herbs. Meat should fall off bone easily, and stir meat back into soup, leaving the carcass out. Serve warm when potatoes or pasta is soft but not mush. Enjoy!- Jesse.