California Cuisine

It is estimated that by the time that Europeans first visited California in the sixteenth century there were 310,000 Native Americans living in California gathered into small villages and speaking over 60 different languages.

When the Spanish arrived in 1769, they derided the natives for their omnivorous diet referring to them pejoratively as "diggers". It became a popular myth that Native Californians lived on acorns alone. In truth, their diet included a broader variety of food sources than most of their contemporaries and reflected the diversity and ecology of their environment. Because of the diversity of their diets, original Californians enjoyed a distinct advantage over other indigenous groups who relied on a single main food-source (corn, salmon, seal etc.) which, as you night imagine, also made them more vulnerable to famine.

For example, among the foods eaten by the Chumash, who lived around modern-day Santa Barbara, the Costanoans who thrived on the Central Coast, and the Miwok, who inhabited the coastline between present-day San Francisco and Monterey, were: acorns, pine nuts, berries, grapes, honey, nuts, tule sprouts, roots, grasshoppers, eggs, snails, trout, salmon, shellfish, deer, elk, and small game including ground squirrels, woodrats and waterfowl. The Pomo, who lived in the Russian River Valley area, also had unique recipes for roasting moth-caterpillars and preparing salty palm kelp.

The indigenous Californian's diet was obviously highly attuned to the seasons. The Sierra Miwok collected clover in the spring, seeds in the summer, and mushrooms in the winter, with fruits and bulbs serving as their secondary foods. The tools used for river fishing and food-gathering were often similar. Weirs, traps, stiff nets and other devices for catching fish were made in the same technique as the beaters, carriers and winnowers for seeds and nuts. Even the hunting was rarely done with a weapon. Ducks were snared, rabbits were driven into nets, deer caught with nooses.

If there was a staple food used throughout California it was certainly acorns. While oaks did not grow in the higher mountains, in the desert, or on most of the immediate coast, they ranged widely from lower California to Oregon. In other words. it was never too long a hike to find abundant acorn-bearing trees.

Untreated acorns contain astringent and toxic tannic acid. Early treatment of acorns involved a lengthy immersion process of burying them in a sandy place with grass, charcoal and ashes and then soaking them in water until they became sweet and edible. Later, the grinding tools used for seeds and grains were adapted to pulverize the acorns into a sort of pesto which was then leached in a sandy shallow basin or tightly woven basket-a much easier and efficient process.

The Pomo people had an even more sophisticated method of removing the tannins from acorns, and one almost identical to tat of early inhabitants of the island of Sardinia. They mixed the acorn meal with a red clay that reduced the tannic acid by up to seventy five percent. Once the acorns were adequately leached, it was only necessary to add water, mold the meal into a small cake and bake them in an earthen oven.