Old Magic1 wrote:
> From: <crafty_one_66>
> Wild Game and Fish Recipes
> Native American Elk/Venison Stew with Acorn Dumplings
> 1/4 cup acorn meal or finely ground hazelnuts
> 1/2 cup acorn meal or finely ground hazelnuts
> 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

Interesting, to me at least. Elk and acorns...

I live on the flood plain of the Tule river, where the foothill Yokuts
and the valley Yokuts met to trade and hunt for elk, and gather acorns
by the bushel basket under the spreading valley oaks. That went on up
until about a century ago, when white migrants took over their land for
cattle ranchs, the Yokuts were put on a reservation about a mile from
here, but the ranchers wanted that land, so the Yokuts were pushed
further back into the hills...

Their descendants had the last laugh, though. White senior citizens
by the busloads go up to the new Yokuts reservation to gamble at the
Indian casino...

There are very few valley oaks remaining of the 400 square mile oak
forest, and the elks are across the valley in the Tule Elk Reserve...

A few weeks ago, I found an Indian grinding rock along a creek, where
eight Yokuts women would sit and grind acorns into a staple acorn meal,
which was could be eaten as a gruel, or formed into
cakes and stored for winter...

The acorns from the valley oaks contain a lot of tannin, which has to
be leached out of the ground up acorn meal by pouring water over it and
straining the water out of the acorn meal through a soft buck skin, or
a finely woven reed mat. I've never done that personally, but I've seen
old films where that was done...

The native Americans also ground up the holly leaf cherry and made
flour of the kernels inside the sweet outer layer. An early explorer to
the region, who later became governor of California (under the Spanish
flag) described the resulting ground meal as being used to make
excellent "black tamales"...