North America's Largest

[Tom]

This should be easy.

[beenthere]

Bur Oak

[SPIKER]

Natural headache enhancer!:o
Squirrel enticers/pacifier/tranquilizers ? 
mark

[SwampDonkey]

Looks like Bur, I know they can be 2" long in the south. Were you outside your fine State Tom to get those?

[limbrat]

Norht America's largest ACORNS. Brought to you by Tom and water bur oak.

[Jeff]

Are those good to eat?

[SwampDonkey]

I have no idea, some acorns are suppose to be OK to eat. I think many are bitter. I read someplace that some oak gulls are harvested for the extractives in them for inks. Learning something all the time. 

[Jeff]

Our bur oaks up here have the sweetest acorns. The deer like them the best and I have heard people make flour from them.

[Mooseherder]

I tried some Live Oak Acorns because the Blue Jays like them.  They were bitter.

[SPIKER]

Not sure which types of oaks were used but native American Indians used to grind the acorns into flour and make all sorts of good stuff from them but I also think that was a lime/limestone  treatment done as well similar to that of corn that made the flour more palatable and or less un-palatable I imagine :x   They GROUND the acorns in Lime Stone holes which MAY or MAY NOT have been simple pure luck that made them better.   When I was a kid we tried all types of stuff, I can say I never met an acorn I liked, unless I had my trusty wrist rocket handy and a squirrel looked HUNGRY     oh ya, Chipmunks are not edible either but if ya shoot one with a acorn that size you could find out for your self... :p


Mark

[beenthere]

SPIKER
And the indians may have been satisfied eating the acorns even if they were bitter. It was food. 

[Dodgy Loner]

Actually, SPIKER, I find chipmunks to be quite good. Their hind legs are pretty meaty. Very similar to squirrel. Acorns, on the other hand, I have never been fond of. I used to try different kinds of white oak acorns (white oak, post oak, swamp chestnut oak), but they were always very bitter. You bring up an interesting point about treating them with lime. This makes a lot of sense - all cornmeal was treated with lime-water or ash-water by the Native Americans as well. This liberated niacin (the B-vitamin), which would have been deficient in their diets otherwise. I can also see how treatment of acorns with an alkaline solution would neutralize the tannins that make the acorns so bitter. I might just have to try that

[SPIKER]

Actually, SPIKER, I find chipmunks to be quite good. Their hind legs are pretty meaty. Very similar to squirrel.

Ones we fried up mountain man style (skinned stuck on a stick over open fire.) did not taste very good at all, though it may very well have to do with their diet or the wood choice we had used as kids as well.   I know ground hogs taste depending on if they eat out in a field without much variety.   put them in mixed field food source area where access to clover, rye or wheat the taste is much different.  similar to grain fed cow, does not taste as good to me as grass / hay natural selection feed does.   

If you do some research on eating the acorns you will find a lot of information that they are in-eatable or even poisonous, so knowing what where to look is most important.   not sure but species of acorn has a lot to do with the ability to collect and grind for flour..  I dont think you can pick enough of certain types up as the acorns are too small to be worth much effort as well...

Mark

[Dodgy Loner]

I had them marinated and slow-cooked on a propane grill. It was pretty good! I wasn't the one cooking them, though, so I can't offer any tips on successfully cooking your chipmunks!

The survivalist books I've read all claim that white oak acorns are sweet enough to eat straight from the shell, which I've found to be very, very untrue. They also recommend that red oak acorns be boiled in several changes of water to remove the bitter tannins. However, it seems to make more sense to chemically eliminate the tannins with lime water than to try to boil out the tannins (along with most of the vitamins and minerals). I've never read that any acorns are poisonous.

[woodtroll]

Those look like southern Illinois bur oak. Which I have had roasted. They could be good with some salt or butter. I was mopping up a fire when I tried my first. It wasn't bad, so I tried another. With a little patience you could probably come up with something. They were big enough to mess with. Smaller acorns the worms ruin to much of it. Roast it just till the shell cracks off easy.