Back about 8,000 years ago, when I was in elementary school, I had weekly GATE classes (MKULTRA) and we had a unit on Native American Studies. The hippy dippy teacher thought it would be a good use of our collective time to study how Native Americans made acorns into food, since that's what a lot of Native Americans in our area ate. We had several fun field trips, so in the beginning I was pumped about it. The teacher brought in a "Native American" white guy to give us a speech and guilt-trip us and caterwaul a Native American song about how disease killed all his ancestors (except the white ones lol) and I didn't find out until years later that it was actually the Spaniards who brought diseases to the local Native Americans. But I digress.
We first made "acorn baskets" out of rope in class, that was pretty fun. I kept my acorn basket on my desk for years until it finally fell apart. The coils of rope were both tied and glued together, and it lasted a surprisingly long time. I doubt the local Native Americans had cotton rope from Home Depot though.
The next week, we took our acorn baskets on a field trip to collect acorns, which was also pretty fun, but I remember it was pretty hot that day and not all the kids were happy about it.
The fourth week, we began to render the acorns into flour using rocks. GATE kids are not known for their physical acuity, so there were many smashed fingers, tears, and not much flour made. The teacher alternated between panic due to the smashed fingers and smugness because all the little white kids were learning how hard the Native Americans had it.
The fifth week, the acorn flour mysteriously reappeared, perfectly ground and portioned into sacks. I'm pretty sure this magic was not due to Native Shamans, but rather, the teacher's husband figuring out how to grind it quickly and efficiently, since he taught Wood Shop at the local high school and had his own shop in their garage. We watched a movie about how the Natives mixed the flour with water and cooked it into a large cake in a hole in the ground that was filled with hot coals. Apparently some tribes had a coming-of-age ceremony for girls in which the girls had to make an acorn cake from scratch for the tribal elders, and if it wasn't correct, the girl couldn't become a woman or something. I remember the teacher being particularly smug that day. We were just glad we didn't have to bash acorns with rocks and got to watch a movie.
The sixth week was the final week, and we took a field trip to the beach in order to cook the acorn cake. The teacher's husband had built a massive bonfire on the beach out of wood that morning before work, and a teaching assistant had been left behind to guard it until the class got there. By the time the bus arrived, the fire was still roaring pretty hard, so we were allowed to go play on the beach for a while, but not go in the water. By 10:30 or 11, the sun had risen high and the fire had burned down to coals, so we were ready to make the acorn cake. The "Native American" man from the first week served as a sort of Master of Ceremonies and muttered incomprehensible blessings over us while we lined up and dumped our baggies of acorn flour into the totally authentic Home Depot 5-gallon bucket while the teacher stirred it with a big wooden paddle. Finally she poured the dough over the coals and covered it with wet corn husks, then wet leather, then wet sand, and we all broke for lunch while it cooked. Finally it was done, and the teacher removed it from the fire with the wooden paddle onto a piece of tinfoil on a picnic table to cool. To her credit, it wasn't burned, and there was no sand on the bottom of it. We were sent off to play for a while as the fire pit was filled and the acorn cake cooled. Finally, after 6 weeks of struggle, it was portioned up on tiny paper plates. We all had to wait while the "Native American" man sang some incomprehensible gibberish over us all as a blessing. Finally, we got to taste the fruits of our labor.
The primary flavor was charcoal lighter fluid because the Wood Shop teacher went overboard when making the fire. The secondary flavor was salt, because they used seawater to mix the concoction. There was no tertiary flavor. The best I can describe it as is slightly gritty library paste. Some of the children had the good manners to quickly swallow it and put their plates aside. A few spit it out surreptitiously, a few others openly. A couple of students gagged. The teacher was near tears, and the "Native American" man glared at us. I didn't notice him eating any of his "ancestral food". Anyway, it was a huge disaster, but unforgettable. The end.
