HMK teacher takes on creative cooking in the classroom
Familiar candy crowds the school desks in Kathy Pretell’s fourth-grade classroom on Halloween, yet students are ignoring the sweets to measure salt and crack eggs, preparing batter for acorn pancakes.
This year, Pretell decided to include her students in her 5-year journey of making acorn pancakes, inspired by the seasonal opportunity of acorns falling off the trees and instructed by a class on foraging.
Pretell moved to Moab from West Jordan where she learned to appreciate the abundance of the oaks. She shared what she’s learned.
“The two types of oaks—red and white—vary in the time it takes to leach the tannins from the seeds,” Pretell said. “White oaks have more lobed leaves and larger nut meats. The acorns don’t last as long and only need to be leached for a day or two. Red oaks, on the other hand, have more pinnate leaves, smaller acorns, and can be saved for longer periods of time.”
Pretell and her own mother collected the acorns from trees nearby the school before students helped blanch the acorns. The prep work was extensive: three to four days of soaking the acorns to remove the tannins, baking them until dry, and milling them in a wheat-mill to turn them into a brown flour one student likened to brown sugar.
After a pancake taste-testing, kids gave the pancakes wildly different ratings (ranging from a 4 out of 10 to 1000 out of 10). All students, however, enjoyed the spirit of the event and learned something about the acorn’s importance as a food source in early human history.
The recipe is from Jean Craighead George from the book “Acorn Pancakes, Dandelion Salads and 33 other Wild Recipes.”
Acorn Pancakes
Ingredients
½ cup white flour
1 cup acorn flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
1 egg, well beaten
1 ½ cups milk
3 tablespoons butter
Instructions
- In a bowl, mix flours, baking powder, and salt.
- In another bowl, mix egg, milk and butter.
- Pour milk mixture into dry ingredients and stir just enough to moisten dry ingredients.
- Spoon onto greased, hot grill or frying skillet. Flip and turn once. Serve with maple syrup or wild jellies.
