A crash course in changing the world.
2020 and Acorns for dinner!
Its 2010 and Acorns are on the menu.
Ten years ago no one ate acorns. They just fell to the ground and animals ate some of them but many of them rotted.
Now we all go for walks in the woods on beautiful fall days and collect the acorns.
Ten years ago everyone thought grinding and leaching the acorns was too much work! But a student group from Olin, following the example of Amy Smith created simple technologies that make collecting, grinding and leaching acorns much simpler and less time consuming.
Now, with the emphasis on local foods all the best restaurants have tortillas, rice dishes and deserts that all feature acorn meal. You can get acorn bread at the local bakery and I use it frequently to make delicious and protein packed waffles.
If you want to try it here are recipes: http://www.californiaoaks.org/ExtAssets/acorns_and_eatem.pdf
Here is the story of one person's journey to Acorn Waffles:
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Comment by Claire Moylan on March 11, 2010 at 10:17pm -
Can you post links to these "technologies" that make acorn leaching and grinding simpler?
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Comment by Caroline Meeks on March 11, 2010 at 10:21pm -
Claire, I will after they have been invented. ;) This is an imagine post about what the world will be in 2020.
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Comment by Caroline Meeks on March 11, 2010 at 10:26pm
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BTW the method in that pdf doesn't look that bad for small quantities. He puts it in the fridge and changes the water every day for a week. I'm going to try it next fall.
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Comment by Claire Moylan on March 12, 2010 at 9:06pm
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Oh, now I get it! Hey, this is a great idea! Taking things that we have used in the past and failed to really explore fully and applying new technologies to them!
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Comment by RD on March 13, 2010 at 10:11am -
Hi Caroline. This is a great local insight quite relevant in your geographical domain. But I am sure that we all have an opportunity to learn from this. I do agree with Claire Moylan that we need a rethink whether the things that failed earlier can be redesigned better in future. Which approach do you reckon will work the best in this case: incremental or radical innovation?
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Comment by Caroline Meeks on March 13, 2010 at 2:37pm
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I think an interdisciplinary approach. Right now there are people who think about historic food sources, like historians and re-creationists and there are engineers who think about gadgets and chemical processes but who never think about acorns.
I'd love to see some engineers who have knowledge of the state of the art in processing think about how we could turn acorns into a significant food source.
I'm not sure if the result will be termed incremental or radical. :)
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Comment by Shakwei Mbindyo on March 16, 2010 at 7:55pm -
These look delish! +1 Creativity
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