Wood Ears

Look what my son found on his walk through the neighborhood!  He sent me a photo and asked, " are these edible?" To which I replied "Yes!!"  Wood ears... It has been a while since I have stumbled upon any.  On my way to work, I saw the tree that had been cut down and was now sporting several pounds of these delicacies.  I picked a bunch, brought them home and threw them on the dehydrator.  They shrunk down from several pounds to several ounces.  They are perfect to store now and delish when re hydrated

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Making Pecan Milk

Well we have a huge pecan tree in front of our house and I picked 60 pounds of pecans and hauled them to the pecan cracking place just in time before they closed for the season.  Wouldn't you know it, that tree dropped another 30 pounds at least and we are left to the old fashioned way of cracking them by hand.  I have a cracker but even then end up with a lot of little pieces that I just can't get out of the shell without spending a lot of time.  I was remembering a video I saw of a native American who was telling how they used to take hickory nuts ( which are a bear to crack and then even harder to extract the nut) and instead of cracking and eating the nuts, they ground them, shells and all and boiled them, ran them through a strainer and made milk which they added to rice instead of cooking in water, thus adding both protein and fat.  I decided to see if that might work on pecans and devoid of any recipe, I combined what little I could remember about the process with hickory nuts and also remembering to boil a few times, raw acorns to get rid of tannins, and set about making pecan milk.
Next time I think I will soak the ground up nuts/shells a bit first and pour off the water.  Anyways here is what I did:

I washed the shells first, then rinsed the cracked shells /meat and then ground them by putting them in a mesh bag and taking a hammer to them and then grinding in a blender with a little water.  I ran the whole thing through a mesh bag and tasted it.  Kinda bland and I could taste a little tannin so then I thought maybe I should boil the whole thing so I took the meat/shells/milk and put it in a pan on top of the stove and boiled them for a few minutes and then strained again.  To the jar I added just about  1/2 tsp of sugar.  I made rice with it that night and it tasted pretty good.  I think I might add a touch of vanilla and a touch more sugar if drinking it plain. 

If anyone has made this before and has a tried and true method for doing so, I would love to know about it.