Abundance of acornd

Cracking, crunching and popping noises startled me as I drove down our driveway. I stopped the car. 

“I thought the mechanic said we could drive home even though the car engine light had come on” I muttered as I opened the door to check the car. My foot crunched down on freshly fallen acorns.

Recent storms shook our oak trees. They liberally scattered acorns across our yard and driveway.  Evidently this past summer produced a bumper crop. I do not remember seeing that many acorns in previous years, but we have plenty this year. Hard, shiny little globes without their cute caps.

Nothing wrong with the car. It could not quietly roll over hundreds of acorns without cracking and crushing them.

Twisting the key, shifting into gear, I proceeded to crush parallel rows of acorns as I left for town.

Later that afternoon hubby announced, “I am going to pick up the tree limbs that fell during the storm.”

About 4 p.m. he wandered into the house carrying a basket half filled with acorns, “there are a lot of acorns out there. I picked up this many just sitting in one place,” he marveled.

“Have we had that many in the past?” I asked.

“No. I don’t remember it,” he said.

“So what are you going to do with them?”

“Maybe they can be eaten.”

I looked at him skeptically. “Really? I don’t know of any recipes using acorns.”

He sat down at the computer, researched and found plenty of information for making and using acorns.

Finally, he pushed away from the computer. “You can make acorn coffee,” said my avowed anti-coffee man. “The guy who did it ended up adding coffee to the mix. You can eat the nuts if you first soak them to get rid of the tannin. Then they have to be spread out one layer at a time and dried in the oven on a low temperature.”

I nodded and walked away. I had no interest in making acorn anything.

But he did.

He took over my kitchen. No problem for me. He often takes care of the dishes and loads the dishwasher.

He soaked the acorns to release the tannin. 

About 8 or 9 p.m. I noticed he had taken the shiny new stainless steel cake pans I recently found and proudly used in baking. They are the nicest I have ever owned. He arranged a layer of acorns in each pan and set the oven for 175 degrees.

“The instructions said to wash them twice, but I did it three times to make sure all the tannin was out,” my overachiever confided before I went to bed.

Around midnight, I woke up smelling food burnt in the oven. A few minutes later he came to the bedroom.

“So you made acorn coffee?” I yawned.

“I was going to make acorn coffee or make them edible, but they burnt. I had them in the oven toasting. I knew it would take time so I sat down to play a game. I got involved and forgot the acorns. I tried cutting off the burnt part but it was not worth it.”

I sighed, “Did you clean the pans?” 

“I will,” he promised.

At 1 a.m. he began scrubbing the scorched pots and pans. 

When I walked into the kitchen in the morning, clean counters greeted me. He had placed all his harvest of acorns by the trash can at the door. He never mentioned any other acorn recipes found online, and he left the rest of the oak seeds for the squirrels to gather and the car tires to crunch.

 


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