"Rotten coffee" said the old newspaper friend. This was some years ago. "Reminds me of the stuff that was drunk in Germany - and perhaps other European countries after the war. They made it out of ground roasted acorns they picked up in the woods. Germans and others had to make do in those days. But, mind you, I remember, after coffee in a very hospitable house in Bavaria, being plied with fine schnapps which they swore they made from local fruit. To take the taste of the coffee away, they said." Acorns - millions brought down in the recent gales here - have also been put to other uses beside the above, and beside the feeding of pigs. Ground up raw, they have been used in more than one country to help fill out the making of flour. Probably in this country; certainly in dire times on the Continent. France, for example. In times of need, it is remarkable how many plants can be put to use in the cause of human nourishment. The same old newsman told of meeting a boy in a German wood picking up beech nuts, laborious in that there weren't so many of that tree in the particular wood. He wanted them not for eating but for turning into cooking oil. And when you think of it, alongside olive oil in the shops, you often find nut oil (walnut oil mostly, isn't it?). Days and days the lad (about 10 years old, our friend thought) spent collecting enough to bring to a centre where they were converted into oil. You could possibly get similar results from boiling the nuts and allowing the oil to come to the top? No. Anyway, the boy concerned had more on his mind than nuts.
He was also furiously stuffing leaves into a huge sack when our friend met him. "What's that for?" Answer: "For my rabbits." Pause. "Not to eat, of course, just for their bedding." The boy smiled to himself. "Rabbits are good to eat. Also for barter. We will eat the big one ourselves." Then he paused. "We had rabbits once before and a couple of geese, but a dog got in and killed them." He was halted by the appalling memory. Remember, in post-war Germany money often mattered less; where food was concerned, it was barter. Especially townspeople bringing their silver and other valuables to the farmer in exchange for food. That's a long way from the original words about roasted acorns being ground for coffee. Possibly more healthy than coffee-coffee. But, from our friend's experience, not really worth the experiment.