re acorns, some time ago i learned of different acorns which are more edible, but i have no direct experience of them, but the following info does get my curiousity going...
from Cooks Info:
"
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Acorns
Acorns are nuts from oak trees.
There are really, from a food aspect, two types of acorns: Spanish and North African acorns, and all the rest.
The acorns most worth bothering with are considered to be those of the oak tree known variously as holly, holm or ilex oak (Quercus ilex var rotundifolia — aka var ballota) which grows all around the Mediterranean, including particularly north-west Africa, Spain and Portugal. These are long, cylindrical acorns. When fine Spanish ham makers boast about their pigs being allowed to eat acorns, you may have wondered why eating those bitter old things would improve the taste of their meat. It is in fact these nuts, which the Spanish call “ballotas”, that the pigs eat. In some parts of Europe, pigs still allowed to room the woods and eat these acorns; a pig will eat 22 to 26 pounds (10 to 12 kg) of the nuts a day.
These trees are even cultivated for their acorns, and some think them as good as chestnuts. These would have been the ones that a Duchess (in Don Quixote) would have bothered asking for. They can be eaten out of hand like nuts (once shelled, of course.) In Spain, the acorn season is called “montanera.” "
https://www.cooksinfo.com/acorns
what makes me curious is why they haven't been spread more around the world to other similar areas as where they are grown now if they are that useful and edible?
climate perhaps, but ...? any tree similar to chestnut that is edible would be a great addition to any forest and as with the loss of the chestnut trees in the USoA a lot of the easily edible forest mast production was gone. a lot of people used to let their pigs go in the woods and then retrieve them for easy meat production. i mean, you don't have to cultivate or irrigate a forest tree like that. it's like manna...
well, in further reading down that page you find there are others considered more edible...
. Only 3 and 4 years old when we lived there, I quickly learned my way around and still seem to have clear memories.
