Harvesting Chinquapins is not for the faint of heart. We wear rubberized gloves to get the nuts from the opened burrs. Chinquapins can be eaten raw or roasted. They may also be well roasted and milled into a flour and used as such. We have on some years placed a sheet under a few trees and let the nuts fall in order to make collecting easier. However, we found the weevils became a much bigger problem that way. And I’m not hungry enough to eat weevils! White oak acorns are much easier to prepare for eating as they have less tannins. The acorns need to be soaked in water. You can use a mesh laundry bag to keep them contained and soak for a t least a day. Keep changing the water as it becomes cloudy or dirty looking. Red oak acorn have much more tannins and take more work to make them edible. Once soaked and dried, they can be slow roasted and ground for flour.