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Get out and pick your hazel nuts NOW!

I picked a kilo yesterday and am going to pick more today.

Animal (greedy) bastards are on the rampage at the moment (squirrels, voles, rats, mice, sheep and rabbits) eating your nuts.

Get out into the wild and grab your nuts.

Wild hazel nuts taste about 10 million times better than the GM shite sold in supermarkets as gay nuts and natural contain 80,000 times more nutrition.

Get out and pick some natural food.

My one nut is currently still there. I shall be checking it tomorrow. Thankfully I have been eating my way through bowls and bowls of blackberries, and if you want to start your Xmas wine brew for 2007, don't forget to pick your elderberries next week. Oh, and grab a mushroom ID book, there are loads around now too.

Wife & I went foraging last weekend and got stacks of blackberries, plums and elderberries, plus a handful of nuts. Damn squirrels seem to get to them first. We've now got loads of bottles of elderberry cordial. Great for vodka and tonic cocktails!

Thought hazelnuts weren't ready for another couple of weeks? There are loads round us...

Making lots of blackberry and crab apple jam this week. Picked about 8lbs of backberries on our afternoon stroll yesterday. Yum.

You can pick hazlenuts before they're ripe and leave them in a bowl by a window to ripen in the sun. That way you can get to 'em before the squirrels.

Animal (greedy) bastards are on the rampage at the moment (squirrels, voles, rats, mice, sheep and rabbits) eating your nuts.

Ahhh.
Look here, Tesco won't let them through the door so they have to scrape what living they can by foraging in the hedgerows. It's not their fault.

Yum. I know what I'm doing next weekend...

Those pesky squirrels better keep their mitts off my nuts, otherwise I'll sue.

Got three big trees at the bottom, but that bastard george bush and george bush senior been stealing my nuts!

George Bush Senior is a big grey Squirrel
And his son Junior!

But my Lakeland terrier gives them hell Plus my Lakie dont like nuts hence win win for me

Has anyone tried preparing and eating acorns yet?
I read that you need to ripen them (store for 2 weeks) then shell and treat to remove tannins.
My book (Earth care manual) then says to roast them - how long and how hot?
and what do they taste like?
Apparently removing tannin may also remove vitamins and minerals, but you still get a good carbohydate...

....and anyone tried making flour with chestnuts?

thanks!
I am looking forward to getting some info!

Acorn coffee;
http://www.howies.co.uk/content.php?xSe ... =x&limit=0

Got my elderberry wine bubbling already.

And a demi-john of grape/blackberry wine.

Damsons are good right now too.

Thanks!

and I have internet searched lots of info on eating acorns, let me know if you are interested anyone! (or you can wait a couple of weeks and we will let you know how they taste!)

What sort of stuff have you found?

Disclaimer: I am not resonsible for any illness that may result!
I haven't tried it yet!

Acorns are good for controlling blood/ sugar levels
full of complex carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and fibre (although one thing I read said that the leaching / boiling removes some of the vitamins etc. although the remaining carbs are still good.

The inside of the acorn should look yellowish, if it is brown it is going off! lok out for worms and bugs.....
Collect a lot of them, and spread them out on an old sheet or something, somewhere warm and sunny to dry. could take 2 weeks or so?
We will know when they are dry when the shell wrinkles.... I think!

remove shells and caps (the hard part)

They are full of tannin which tastes nasty and is bad for us, so must be removed. Some different ways. Boil for about 2 hours - changing the water each time it gets really brown (this is the tannin) keep going til water is clear.
soak - I think it was for a week or something - again changing the water

Then roast in an oven, 350F for 1 hour, eat or grind into flour.

There are other ways of removing tannin , more can be found by typing 'eating acorns' into gooooogle!


I am now researching chestnuts, you can freeze them, and can make flour from them too!

Yes, I'm keen on finding a good sweet chestnut tree somewhere in our local english heritage woodlands, but there don't seem to be an awful lot around here. I'm convinced by the earthcare manual that they will become an important crop in the UK.

Tracy Pepler wrote:They are full of tannin which tastes nasty and is bad for us, so must be removed. Some different ways. Boil for about 2 hours - changing the water each time it gets really brown (this is the tannin) keep going til water is clear.
soak - I think it was for a week or something - again changing the water

Then roast in an oven, 350F for 1 hour, eat or grind into flour.

SunnyJim's link to acorn coffee simply says 'roast', so presumably this kills the tannin? Or does it simply turn it into something palatable?