From January to March, Chentang Town is almost entirely covered with snow and the Sherpa live mainly on grain stored in autumn, which alone is not enough. Every August and September, Sherpa women therefore collect the acorns of Quercus gambleana, process them into starch and store it for the winter. Local people told us that a meal made from this acorn starch keeps you full for a whole day.

The Sherpa call the removal of tannins from the acorns “removing the black water” (Fig. 2). The acorns are shelled and crushed into coarse granules, wrapped in rhododendron leaves and washed repeatedly with water; when the “black water” has been removed, the granules turn yellow. “If the acorns are not processed, they taste very bitter, and if you eat too many you get constipated,” the local people told us.