cooking acorn pancakes by Shelley Hopkins

Bang, bang, I swing the hammer down, scattering acorns all over my kitchen counter and my floor.  Apparently you don’t need to hit the acorns quite so hard.  Tap, tap, and I crack them open.  I can now pull the shells apart to reveal the nutty meat.  I try popping the meat out with no luck.  I try using a knife, and then my fingernails.  The nut’s meat crumbles a little, but stays in place.  My husband, watching me while working on his computer, suggests using our grapefruit spoon.  As I gain a little technique, the serrated spoon seems to work the best, and in just three long hours I have a small pie tin full of acorn meats.  I had to toss nearly half of the nuts due to worms or rot.  I tasted an acorn and nearly spit it out right onto my kitchen floor due to its bitter taste.

Yesterday while collecting the acorns I was full of enthusiasm.  It was a pretty day in the woods and acorns were easy to find.  I had an aura of self-sufficiency; I knew that no matter what might happen some day I could feed my family.  I had never thought about acorns as a food supply before.  I fantasized about collecting a bagful every week, free and healthy food.  Then the work began, separating the acorns with obvious worm holes, learning how hard to hit the nuts, then dragging the meat out.  Tapping away I thought about some of our colloquial sayings such as “he’s a tough nut to crack,” used when it is difficult to really understand a person or to get that person to open up and talk about himself.  I cracked open several acorns to find brown dust instead of healthy yellow meat, and I thought about another phrase we use, “He’s a bad nut.”  My husband might watch me tapping away at these acorns and think of another use of the word nut, as in “she is nuts to spend her time this way.”  

The next step is to grind the meat into a watery powder with my food processor.  I end up with a brown gooey mess.  Next I pour this acorn paste on a kitchen towel over a strainer.  I rinse the paste with cold water and squeeze out the excess liquid, repeating to get rid of the tannins.  Tannic acid gives acorns a bitter taste, but after rinsing only a couple of times I try a bite and am pleased.  My acorn powder has a light nutty flavor. 

My next step was to dry the nut paste, so I spread the acorn powder out on a dish and put the dish into a warm oven.  Now I am excited again.  A single day of work yielded enough acorn flour to fill one pint jar, but the flour had a good taste.

I think back to when my children were babies.  I remember buying the little jars of premade baby food, until one day someone told me I could feed my baby other things.  We mashed a banana and fed it to him.  I was shocked, for some reason I had thought babies could only eat official “baby food.”  From that moment on I enjoyed creating my own healthy food, and I felt good feeding it to them.  This was a similar feeling, a revelation that not all food has to come from big box stores.  I gardened when we owned a house, I shop farmers markets, but eating edible wild foods seems even more natural, more sufficient.   Even so the work to gain ratio is high and it is hard for me to imagine living off of acorns and acorn flour like Sam from the book “My Side of the Mountain.”  As modern men and women we really take our healthy, tasty and plentiful food for granted.  Preparing the acorn flour really was a lot of work but we will all enjoy eating our pancakes tonight with supper.

Has anyone else tried this, or anything similar?  Do you have wild edible food recipes or stories about using gardens and canning to teach children where food comes from?  If so, please feel free to share.

The following link to PBS Foods will take you to the recipe I used.  If you fix these pancakes please let me know how they turned out.  I learned that I need to spend more time in the grinding stage, a few of my pancakes had acorn parts instead of acorn flour.  

http://www.pbs.org/food/recipes/acorn-pancakes/?fb_action_ids=4794723386019&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366

I am not a homesteader by Shelley Hopkins

I am not a homesteader, but there are times I dream of living that frugal, self-sufficient life.  I am not a world traveler, but there are times I yearn to live simply, lightly, as I hop around the globe.  Just reading or saying the word “vagabond” stirs my soul.  I am not living on a farm raising chickens, but I can fulfill that need by baking bread or growing herbs in my window.  I may not be able to run off to the mountains and live in a tree, but I can go for long nature walks and come home with a bag full of acorns as I did today.  I may not be travelling the globe, but I can explore my local nature spots, walk for hours just to see where I end up, and observe and photograph unusual spots. 

Today the dog and I took a walk, leaving the apartment and crossing the grassy open space behind the dumpsters, passing two little ponds and following a busy road to the nearest new neighborhood.  We entered the planned community and peeked into privacy fence enclosed back yards, one after another.  Each large house has a tiny neatly cared for yard, but sometimes the backyards are truly inspired, with hammocks under shady trees and designed to give the feeling of a special and private retreat.  Once the neighborhood was fully explored we retreated to the grassy edge of the busy road.  We followed the road to a barely used dirt road that ends in the apartment’s property.  I then take my dog off the leash and enter the woods, the nature trail.

On the same day that we explore these not so wild places my parents are hiking on a snowy day in Montana.  They live in one of those wild places that allows every hike or walk to be spectacular.  Most of us do not live in those places, and therefore we have to make our own adventures, adventures based on our own attitudes as much as location.  One day on a stroll in this same neighborhood I saw a bald eagle flying overhead.  I was in a very suburban location, but I was watching one of the most beautiful raptors soaring in the sky.  The last time I saw a bald eagle was in Yellowstone, while visiting my parents.

The dog and I walk under live oaks, and I keep my eyes on the trail looking for healthy fresh acorns.  I find them in bunches, and begin to fill my plastic bag.  Everywhere I look there are acorns.  Some are cracked, some have been partially eaten or have worm holes, but many of them are fresh and I collect nut after nut.  A jogger passes by, and I wonder what she thinks about my activity.  Soon I have plenty, but there is always two or three more, just beyond the last batch.  I find acorn collecting to be addictive, like gem mining.  I wonder if the squirrels are upset to see a well fed human snatching up their food supply.  Sympathetic mosquitoes finally come out and chase me home.  I drop a bag full of acorns onto my kitchen counter.  Tomorrow I will try my hand at acorn pancakes.  Sam Gribley, from the book “My Side of the Mountain” would be proud, I hope.

My side of the mountain study by Shelley Hopkins

There are so many creative ways to study geography.  When my three kids were elementary and middle school age we decided to do a “world tour” in our home school.  We made passports, travelled to various countries, read books and studied maps, looked at art and created crafts.  At the end of the two weeks we cooked a huge meal with recipes from the country we had just studied and the kids shared their knowledge with my husband, their father. We made displays with our art projects, maps and related discoveries.  We told folk tales from the country, and listened to music.  The highlight of the evening was the meal, although some meals were definitely better than others.  Looking online and talking with friends I realize I am not the only educator to try this, but perhaps by sharing my ideas I can encourage others to start out on their own world adventures.  Also for older students or for the interest of the adults, travel literature can increase the fun and learning potential.  I no longer home school but reading, learning and trying new foods never gets old.

One year I chose, unwittingly, all of our books that I read aloud to the kids with the same theme, running away.  I was not sending any subliminal messages to my kids, I wasn’t desiring to escape my life, I can not say why I ended up choosing these books.  It makes sense that if I want to share the joy of reading I should chose books I enjoy or have enjoyed in my childhood.  That has been one of the great joys of homeschooling; sharing favorite books and watching my children enjoy them as well.  Now they discover and share their favorite books with me, and I am learning about new genres with my three very different young adults.

The Journey

Before beginning our journey lets read a fun book about that same idea, hitting the road and running away.  There are many choices out there depending on age and interest, and of course time.  In my year of the runaway we started with “My Side of the Mountain,” by Jean Craighead George, followed by “The Flight of the Doves,” by Walter Macken,  “The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” by E L Konigsburg, and  “The Hobbit,” by J.R.R. Tolkein. 

In geography class we could discuss the reasons for escaping, all of which would be different depending on the book chosen.  In “My Side of the Mountain” Sam lives in a very crowded New York City apartment.  He wishes to try living on his own, homesteading on his grandfathers abandoned farm.  He receives permission from his father, learns wilderness skills from a book and later from a new friend, and really learns through trial and error.  Sam enjoys living alone but also discovers the value of companionship with animals and a few very interesting people.

The book won the Newberry Award and was chosen in 2007 by the National Education Association as one of the “teachers top 100 books for children.”   After reading the book younger children could study more about falcons and falconry, weasels and raccoons.  They could try fishing, carving their own fishing hooks and making traps.  There are many references in the book that could be researched, such as Thoreau and his Walden.  The book, “A Pocket Guide to the Outdoors: Based on My Side of the Mountain” by Mrs. George and her daughter Twig could enhance the study as well.

The students could plan their own adventures, comparing their choices with Sam’s choices.  You could ask questions such as, “Sam took only a few items with him when he left the city, what would you take on your adventure?”  All of the studies would include map work, locating real places, perhaps researching average temperatures and weather patterns.  Imagine living in a tree without electricity in the winter in the Catskills of New York. 

I always enjoy learning about the authors of my favorite books, and Mrs. George was unconventional.  Her father was an entomologist for the US Forest Service, and her two brothers became famous naturalists who studied grizzlies in the Yellowstone area. Her website is http://www.jeancraigheadgeorge.com/

I believe the perfect ending to this quick study could be a camping trip to a local state park, or even in your backyard.  We grew up camping and I have wonderful memories, more than I could ever relate.  But Sam’s adventure was special because he was on his own.  Maybe the kids could camp alone, in the back yard or at a campsite separate from yours.  Of course that would be a decision each family would have to make on your own family values and abilities.  For the family meal you could cook venison and fish, preferably your own.  Try to use natural wild ingredients such as local berries and dandelion greens.  A little research could help to discover what is available in your area.  In my family we ended each study with a family meal and the children shared what they had learned with their dad.  You could share a video on falconry; the kids could present information on the different animals or about wilderness survival.  Everyone could eat acorn pancakes, dandelion salad and venison steaks or pan fried trout.

I googled acorn pancakes and discovered a variety of recipes and interesting blogs.  According to food.com, two acorn pancakes have 431 calories, 258 of them from fat.  This was an excellent meal for those wilderness survivors, Native Americans and pioneers, but the calorie count may be a little high for modern man. It was interesting to see how many people this book has influenced, and how many people have tried cooking acorn pancakes.  Have any of you ever cooked wild foods like this?  How did it turn out?  If I have luck with acorns I will post about that next week.

Enjoy the adventure. 

            

general teaching with travel literature by Shelley Hopkins

Teaching with Travel Literature

General Idea

            Travel books are a great way to learn about specific parts of the world.  It isn’t possible for most of us to travel all over the world, studying Spanish in Madrid, or cooking in Italy, but we can certainly follow others in their journeys.  These books entertain, they teach and they show us the culture of the places visited through the eyes of the writers.

            When I was young I read My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George.  In this book a young boy named Sam runs away from his crowded family apartment in the city to live in the wilderness.  He burns out a hollow tree for his home, catches fish and produces bread from acorns.  I daydreamed of the same kind of life.  The greatest idea that the book gave me was a feeling of self-sufficiency, in this case where one could live with nature, survive and be happy.  I don’t know how realistic the book is, but I suppose the different creative ways Sam finds food could be done, if the person were talented and lucky, and patient.  I dreamed of living alone, on the side of a mountain, in a hollow tree sheltered from snow and rain, until I discovered another book, Dove, by Robin Lee Graham.  Dove is the true account of a 16-year-old boy who pilots a small sailboat around the world.  Robin puts aside high school with the permission of his parents and alone, partially funded by articles he wrote for National Geographic Magazine, he sails from California around the globe to return to California 3 years later.  Now my dreams changed, I dreamed of living alone on a sailboat, watching the dolphins and enjoying beautiful sunsets on the sea.  In the first book I learned how to carve a fishhook and tame a hawk.  I learned that many useful items could be created from a deer carcass.  Dove taught me about general geography and about the various islands and countries he visited.  After reading the book I knew more about sailing and life at sea.  From both books I developed a feeling of independence, that people could live without all the modern conveniences and that they could live in different and interesting lifestyles.  And my desire to travel and discover the world was born.  I have read many great, and not so great travel stories and through these books I have experienced many cultures and different countries.  I have crossed the United States with John Steinbeck, hiked the Appalachian Trail a couple of times, walked across America and canoed the Mississippi, all through books.  I believe a great and interesting geography/cultures curriculum could be designed around these books, supplemented with maps and atlases.  In the next couple of posts I will share some ideas, starting with My Side of the Mountain.

travel quotes found and compiled by Shelley Hopkins

Here are a few quotes about travel.  I hope to add to this over time, as a quote inspires me.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

 “Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” – Roy M. Goodman

 “Too often. . .I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.” – Louis L’Amour

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G. K. Chesterton

“It is solved by walking.” – Algerian proverb

“He who would travel happily must travel light.” – Antoine de Saint Exupéry

What are your favorite quotes?

How to combine walking and teaching geography by Shelley Hopkins

How to combine walking and teaching geography

I just paid for my first App for my iPhone. I chose cyclemeter because it measures and maps my walks as well as bike rides.  It even has a setting to measure swimming, but since it works with a GPS, and most phones don’t do well in water, I am hesitant to try that one. 

Today my dog and I walked out the front door of our South Carolina apartment, down three flights of stairs and out onto our apartment yard.  We passed the dumpsters and boats and followed this grass way to the entrance of a neighborhood directly across from us.  This is a highly controlled neighborhood of large new houses on tiny well-kept lots, interspersed by two small ponds.  Although the houses are new I find most of them ugly, with strange mixtures of brick and colorful siding.   The last pond as I leave the neighborhood has two alligators enjoying the sun on the far side.  One is medium size and the other pretty small.  This pond is also my daughter’s bus stop.

I cross the road back to the property owned by our apartment complex and enter the nature walk.  My dog is happy because I take her off the leash.  She runs in ever-larger circles until the woods close in, then she simply stops to enjoy the smells, realizes I am ahead of her and races down the trail, only to stop for another smell.  I love the trail full of Spanish moss draped over live oaks as well as other hardwoods.  We circle around to walk along a marshy river.  I can see water birds along the river and crazy mullet fish leaping quite a distance just to land on their sides, creating a large splash.

The trail includes a crab dock and I always stop for a few minutes to enjoy the view and watch the mullets.  This time when I stop I think of the walking app counting down my time.  I have never walked for speed or cared what kind of pace I keep, but today I think about the clock counting, and I continue on my walk.  My dog is happy to keep moving, and she runs back into the shade of the live oaks.

We finish the walk and I check my iPhone.  We walked 2.64 miles in 46 minutes.  I can see my average pace, fastest pace, ascent and descent.  More interesting to me I can see the map of our short walk superimposed on a google map of the area.  I think about this short walk I have discovered and enjoyed as I get to know my new town and state.  I think of all the walks I have enjoyed, getting to know new towns and neighborhoods.  My husband and I have had 17 different addresses in 27 years of marriage.  In each of these homes I have explored and enjoyed walks, almost daily.  We have lived in various apartments, some nicer than others; we have owned 3 homes and have lived in 4 states.  I have walked out my front door, each and every front door for shorter and longer walks in every type of weather.  I have walked alone, with my dog, with my husband, and with the three kids and with friends.   I have walked in heat, rain and even once in a blizzard.  I only enjoyed the first 5 minutes of that walk. 

I wish I had maps of all these walks, with all the variety of terrain, and I would love to know how many miles I have covered in those years.  I also walk on vacations and have strolled across quite a few states as well as Canada and Costa Rica.  I do not think I am unique; walking is such an easy and popular pastime.  It is relaxing, mood altering and great exercise. 

In West Virginia I lived just a block down the street from an elementary school.  One year the school decided to incorporate walking into their curriculum.  They gave students pedometers and the different classes would walk around my neighborhood.  The students always seemed happy.  I could hear them through my open windows on warm days.  I think each grade participated, and each teacher kept a record of how far the class walked.  Then with a map the class charted their miles.  I believe the goal was to “cross the USA” on the map.  I don’t know if they completed the task, but I do know the students got lots of exercise and fresh air.  I am sure they returned to class energized and more ready to learn.   What a great way to combine physical activity with geography.  As the class walked and mapped enough miles to cross into a new state they could learn a little about that state, its rivers and geography, history and culture.  I wish I had thought to do this in my home school.  I can see the map right now on my wall.  The walk would relieve restlessness and the mapping and lessons would keep them interested.  I no longer home school, my kids are grown, but maybe I will walk across the country to California, or even China; who knows!

Why another blog? by Shelley Hopkins

When I decided to write this blog I first researched travel blogs, home school blogs, and even blogs on how to write blogs.  I realized there are hundreds of these online magazines on any and every subject.  I can try to find my specific niche, I can try to be unique and different, or I can just be me.  Write about my interests, goals, passions and experiences.  I love to read, write, travel and hike, and I like to read and write about travels and hikes.  I love to learn and teach.  I am a retired home educator, that is my children were educated at home and now have moved on to other phases of their lives.  I miss the educational outings, the hikes in the woods as well as literary outings as we discovered other cultures through books, music, art and my favorite, travel literature.  A good portion of this blog will be dedicated to those different outings as well as suggestions for other families.

While searching through the various blogs I googled “travel + Home school” and found families that actually travel and home school as a lifestyle choice.  In a way that had been my dream all those years ago when we started our little school.  I had visions of my children reading about Alexander the Great followed by our discovery and walking across countryside that he had conquered.  I wanted to read about Leonardo da Vinci, study pictures of the Mona Lisa, travel to Paris and stand in line for hours to view the famous artwork followed by lunch in a Parisian café sipping coffee and observing the life around us.

I found a blog of a family that has travelled the world with their daughter.  She plays violin in Turkey and in Monet’s garden.  She does algebra on a train ride across France.  She reads a history book about Poland as she travels to Poland.  I then began to think about our home school, in our family room of a very conventional home in the suburbs of Metro Atlanta.  My first thought was of my poor children and all the wonderful life experiences they missed, but instead I saw them reading on our couch snuggled up to me or with each other.  I saw them playing outside in their yard and with their friends.  I saw them in home school co-ops giggling with their buddies, in scouts and church, visiting family for long weekends, and our family sharing dinner around our table.  We were able to travel at times, but our school had stability to it, one that I believe we needed.  We were grounded to our home as center.  I know my children, and I cannot imagine them doing math problems on a train or plane or car.  We tried that many times while visiting family and we found doing school at grandma’s house was not very useful.  That was OK, I happily traded useful school days for family time. 

We travelled in our minds as we read about “The Gods of Greece” and “A Childs History of the World.”  We travelled as we cooked Indian food, sang Mexican songs, and attempted to create our own Impressionist art.  We studied folk tales of Japan, we drew flag after flag and labeled maps of countries I had never heard of before home school.  We also physically traveled all over our state as we studied Georgia history, and later West Virginia history.  One summer the kids and I drove across the country making a loop from Georgia to Montana.  I do not regret a thing about our home schooling, from the choices we made to the ones we did not do.  I may be  “retired” but now I can relive all those experiences in the blog, and hopefully share with you some tips and ideas for your own educational adventures and travels.

Bon Voyage!

P.S.  Life is an adventure and a journey, just reach out and enjoy those opportunities that come your way.