On Acorns
Acorns and humans go way back. These tough-shelled, bitter nuts aren’t a staple crop for most humans today, but across history, they’ve been vital to survival for many groups. Even today, they’re used to make everything from bread to noodles to jelly. They (and hazelnuts) are one of the main crops I looked to when designing the nut resources that are so crucial to many strategies for survival in Stonesaga.
As I’ve worked on Stonesaga, I’ve read a lot about human history and prehistory. One thing that research has reinforced is that the world has changed a lot in the last 20 thousand years, in no small part due to human activity. But sometimes the expanse of ages doesn’t feel quite so impenetrable and all-consuming. So today, we’ll do something a little bit different and talk about how to cook with acorns. I promise, this will come back around to game design!
This is a stock image because a surprise snowstorm covered up the acorns I was going to photograph today. Minnesota, what a state!
A Recipe for Acorn Crepes
This fall, my partner decided to make acorn flour from this year’s bumper crop that the local oaks provided. She has some interesting insights on the process:
The gathering itself was quite easy. We just picked up the acorns and put them in a bag, avoiding any that look moldy, cracked, or have holes (an indication of weevils). It was wet the day we gathered, and I thought it might be a good idea to let them dry a bit before processing so I spread them out on a wire rack in the garage for about a week (in the mean time we had gathered a large quantity of black walnuts and left them to dry on the same wire racks). This ended up being a HUGE mistake as we soon attracted a mouse to feast on the bounty. Since we didn’t love the idea of sharing our living space with a rodent, we quickly moved on to the next step in the process.
Shelling the acorns was tedious and a bit demoralizing. I imagine that in the past a hunter-gatherer would have pounded open the hard shells between two rocks. However, I am not super invested in historical accuracy and place a great deal of value on not smashing my fingers by accident. I used a vice-grip to crack the shells and then sorted them into a small bowl of “good” nuts and a large bowl of shells and “bad” nuts. Over half of the nuts ended up being moldy, buggy, or discolored. We might have had better yield if we had gathered a little earlier in the season. The “bad” nuts got dumped on a compost pile for the squirrels while the “good” nuts went on to the next step.
I pre-soaked the “good” nuts in water to soften slightly and then ground them to a course consistency with an immersion blender (again, I assume this may have been accomplished using rocks in the past). This worked ok, but to be honest the blender struggled a bit as acorns are VERY hard and just about the perfect size to jam between the blades.
Acorns are high in tannins, which make the raw nuts quite bitter in their natural state. Beyond the gross taste, tannins can block the absorption of nutrients and can also be toxic in large quantities. Because of this it is essential to remove the tannins before using the acorns as flour. We accomplished this by cold soaking. We placed the ground acorns in a large bowl with about a 4:1 volume ratio of cold water, covered the bowl, and placed it in the fridge (yet another modern tool). About every 12 hours we filtered out the ground acorns using a clean cloth, discarded the soaking water and refilled with fresh water. At the beginning of the process the water came out dark brown. One week and roughly 14 water changes later it was light yellow. We did one last filtration and spread the course ground acorn mash on Teflon sheets to place in the dehydrator for 1 day. This was a modern tool was essential to our success. This is actually the second year I have tired to make acorn flour. The previous attempt ended in massive disappointment and frustration when the mash got moldy while I attempted to dry on sheets at room temperature—I can only imagine how many ruined batches our ancestors had in the past.
After the leached ground acorns are dried, they can be stored or further ground to make flour.
This represents about 3/4ths of the total yield of course-ground flour (minus what ended up in the first batch of crepes) from a ~2 gallon bucket of acorns.
To make the crepes, I soaked 1 cup of course ground acorns in 1 cup of water and ground further in a magic bullet until very fine.
Here’s the final recipe:
1 cup cold leached acorn flour
½ teaspoon salt
1-2 teaspoon honey (optional for a sweet version)
2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter or other fat
1 cup water
2 large eggs
The texture is firm and a bit chewy, but not tough. The flavor is pleasant but very mild.
I mixed these all up in a bowl then fried in a pre-heated cast iron skillet with hot oil. While one could make bread out of acorn flour, it does not contain gluten so I imagine it would be an incredibly dense bread and lack structural integrity. The crepes actually held up much better than I thought they would, probably because of the two eggs in the recipe. We made a savory version with toppings including oyster mushrooms form our mushroom logs, kale/garlic from the garden, eggs from our backyard hens, and tempeh bacon/parmesan cheese from the local grocery store. Even with modern conveniences it was quite a lot of work, and we didn’t have to forage the fat, salt, tempeh or cheese.
Very tasty with eggs, tempeh bacon, oyster mushrooms, and cheese!
My takeaways:
1). Past hunter gatherers likely had to be vigilant in protecting their haul from rodents. Outside, squirrels and mice will make quick work of the windfall around the oak trees. You have a window of only about a month to gather before nature cleans up. Even after bringing the acorns back to your living area you have to find a good way to protect them from insects and mice that would be happy for a free meal.
2). If one was relying on acorn flour as a staple food, one would need A LOT time as well as many bowls for cold leaching and storage.
The Little Things that Grow
So how does this relate to game design? In this case, it’s that practical experience can provide small insights you don’t get from research alone. From needing to deal with rodent raids to finding grubs in many of the acorns to the space required for leaching and storing acorns, there were all sorts of little details that rose to prominence when observed firsthand.
These sorts of details are where theme-first games like Stonesaga live and breathe. If the competing incentives are what keeps the game flowing, the intricacies are what draw people into the overall experience. These are the little moments people remember in immersive experiences. Taken together, these flourishes can inform the experience as much as the core mechanics. As I mentioned in my recent update to Stonesaga, I’ve been filling out the small-yet-important corners of the game, from the challenges and goals to the many secrets hidden in the codex.
What’s Next?
My schedule has kept me too busy to blog much of late, but I am planning to change that in 2024. I have been involved in three major projects that I am very excited to talk more about (Stonesaga and two others I can’t discuss publicly yet). And for all three, “thematic experience” are going to be critical watchwords. So I hope you’ll join me as we step forward into the new year to discuss these visions inspired by the past, aspiring to the future, and of things more distant and strange still!