For our final lesson this year, we talked about the concept of legacy and watched a short film from the Oakland Museum of California featuring four generations of Ohlone women. We heard Ruth Orta and her descendants discuss the importance of the oak tree and their cultural traditions around the preparation of acorn as food. Mr. Orlando wondered how Indigenous peoples originally learned to leach the toxins from the acorn so the plant could provide nourishment for thousands of years. We all stand on the shoulders of ancestors who have figured a lot of stuff out for us!
In the kitchen classroom, we made acorn brownies using hand-processed acorn flour from Grass Valley and an Ohlone tea from native plants. Because white sage has been overharvested and poached in California in recent years, we supplemented with yarrow, another native plant with many medicinal properties.
While we waited for our tea to steep, we played the Ohlone game of staves, a simple yet very engaging game of chance played with sticks. The first chef at each table to get to five points won the game—students were deeply invested in the outcome. It was a great privilege to spend the past 10 weeks with all the second and third graders studying the history of San Francisco and to look towards our collective future at the end. We can’t wait to cook again with you all next year!
