ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
That's a lot of corncob pipes, though. Surely you know someone with a mill you can borrow? What about a hollowed out log and a big stick/baseball bat? I'd pay you see you hand mill your corn.
let's see your veggie garden {pics}
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That's a lot of corncob pipes, though. Surely you know someone with a mill you can borrow? What about a hollowed out log and a big stick/baseball bat? I'd pay you see you hand mill your corn.
OldDinosaurWesH
Well-Known Member
Yes, I buy my cornmeal in bulk at the Adventist-owned Grocery store. I can get different grinds that way. They have all kinds of interesting bulk stuff in there as well as a tremendous veggie section.
I use the cornbread recipe from the "El Molino" cookbook. Another archaic food related thing I have. I'll send you the recipe if you want. I've never actually used a pre-fab corn bread before. Only pre-fab cakes.
Something about cabbage seems to go really well with cornbread. Cabbage cole-slaw and cornbread and Salmon. Sauerkraut and old fashioned frankfurters and cornbread. Mmm. I grew up eating those. Tasty.
Wes H.
I use the cornbread recipe from the "El Molino" cookbook. Another archaic food related thing I have. I'll send you the recipe if you want. I've never actually used a pre-fab corn bread before. Only pre-fab cakes.
Something about cabbage seems to go really well with cornbread. Cabbage cole-slaw and cornbread and Salmon. Sauerkraut and old fashioned frankfurters and cornbread. Mmm. I grew up eating those. Tasty.
Wes H.
Brown Thumb
Well-Known Member
Some peppers, onions, garlic, venision and cheese sliced thin would look good on themsIs it easier than my current method?
Bob
That's corn cake. I just eyeball everything.
Cornmeal, enough for the container you're cooking in
Eggs and milk
Bacon grease
Baking powder
Salt
Mix dry ingredients, don't overdo it on the salt and baking powder, about 1tsp and 1tbsp respectively for the size I made. Mix wet ingredients while the oven is heating add a couple more tablespoons of bacon grease to the batter to make it moister. Mix and mix.
Preheat cast iron in oven to about 450 with a couple tbsp of bacon grease. When oven is up to temp pour batter in and swirl the pot so excess oil covers the top of of the batter and try to get it all over. Then it goes back in the oven until golden brown and butter knife comes out clean, 15-20 minutes.
Get the cornbread out and let it cool down on a plate.
It's a southern style cornbread and I like to use it because it's just using your corn and not flour, but adding anywhere from a couple tbsp to an equal amount flour to cornmeal will allow it to capture more air bubbles and change texture etc. Whatever your preference.
It's really simple and I don't think there is any correct recipe so long as it produces a good batter (not too dry or too wet) it should work.
Cornmeal, enough for the container you're cooking in
Eggs and milk
Bacon grease
Baking powder
Salt
Mix dry ingredients, don't overdo it on the salt and baking powder, about 1tsp and 1tbsp respectively for the size I made. Mix wet ingredients while the oven is heating add a couple more tablespoons of bacon grease to the batter to make it moister. Mix and mix.
Preheat cast iron in oven to about 450 with a couple tbsp of bacon grease. When oven is up to temp pour batter in and swirl the pot so excess oil covers the top of of the batter and try to get it all over. Then it goes back in the oven until golden brown and butter knife comes out clean, 15-20 minutes.
Get the cornbread out and let it cool down on a plate.
It's a southern style cornbread and I like to use it because it's just using your corn and not flour, but adding anywhere from a couple tbsp to an equal amount flour to cornmeal will allow it to capture more air bubbles and change texture etc. Whatever your preference.
It's really simple and I don't think there is any correct recipe so long as it produces a good batter (not too dry or too wet) it should work.
Thanks for the recipe. For me, the mystery of most recipes is temperature and time. I have both corn meal and masa harina. A small portion of the latter might expose more corn gluten, for a lighter feel. I'll have to do some experiments.
Bob
Bob
Nixtamalization, I've made that too, you boil the whole corn with pickling lime they turn super bright orange almost immediately, rinse and rub off the skins. It frees the niacin and like you say gives it a more gluten feel which helps making tortillas and the like. I've never made cornbread after that process but it's a great idea to minimize crumbling without wheat.
I'll try it.
I'll try it.
What to do with field corn
If you grow some robust variety of field corn (maize), hoping to make a nice, fat corncob pipe, you end up with a bunch of field corn. Although usually fed to livestock, it is perfectly edible for corncob pipe smokers. You can pick immature ears at the "milk" stage, for roasting ears, but you then lose the cob for use as a pipe bowl. So we're looking at ways to utilize the dried corn.
One way to use it is to simply grind the dried corn kernels into cornmeal. Another approach, which does not require a corn grinder is to make it into hominy. It just takes a little preparation, and is somewhat similar to cooking dried beans--easy and slow. But there one big difference: nixtamalization.
[I've tried just cooking well dried field corn in a Crockpot--for 48 hours, actually--and it just never softens the outer coat of the kernels. While this may work with fresh field corn, it doesn't work with well dried field corn. It's edible, but very crunchy, and not particularly appetizing. I tossed it.]
You can make excellent hominy with field corn (In Mexico, this is called nixtamal), and if you do have a corn grinder, you can grind the nixtamal, and use it to make tamales (a stuffing of some sort, wrapped in thick corn paste--held together with a section of softened corn husk while cooking), tortillas (thin, un-risen, corn pancakes) , or tortilla chips (just drop quartered tortillas into hot oil, drain and salt).
Hominy can be made with any variety of dried corn. The dried corn is soaked in a hot, alkaline solution, to free the kernels of their tough coating. This allows the interior of the kernel to swell up by as much as 5 times.
Cal Mexicana is lime [calcium hydroxide, or Ca(OH)[sub]2[/sub]]. You can alternatively use pickling lime, which is purified and a little more concentrated. Don't bother with "Pickle Crisper", which is calcium chloride, since it won't work (despite recipes to the contrary on-line).
ITEMS REQUIRED:
PROCEDURE:
The shelled corn and the lime are added to boiling water, stirred, then the pot is covered and the heat is turned off. Do this in the evening, and let it soak overnight.
White corn and lime added to boiling water.
In the morning, dump this into a colander, rinse it well, then use your hands to rub away any attached skins from the plump kernels, placing the naked hominy kernels into a separate bowl or strainer. You now have hominy (nixtamal). Rinse it again, thoroughly. At this stage, you can grind the raw nixtamal to make a paste, if you want a tamal, a tortilla or a chip. For plain old hominy, it's ready to cook.
Lime-treated and soaked corn, after first rinse--skins still on.
To remove the skins, take a small handful at a time, and roll it between your palms. The skins will then rinse off.
For serving as hominy, just simmer it in water to cover, with some butter, until it reaches the consistency you like. Occasionally taste a kernel as it cooks, but measure progress in hours, rather than minutes. You can even mash it with a potato masher, to produce creamy, fluffy grits. As it cooks, the cooking water becomes thicker and thicker, as some of the corn dissolves. Add salt.
The cleaned hominy begins its simmer, to further swell and soften.
This is partially mashed hominy grits, with salt, pepper and butter.
Bob
If you grow some robust variety of field corn (maize), hoping to make a nice, fat corncob pipe, you end up with a bunch of field corn. Although usually fed to livestock, it is perfectly edible for corncob pipe smokers. You can pick immature ears at the "milk" stage, for roasting ears, but you then lose the cob for use as a pipe bowl. So we're looking at ways to utilize the dried corn.
One way to use it is to simply grind the dried corn kernels into cornmeal. Another approach, which does not require a corn grinder is to make it into hominy. It just takes a little preparation, and is somewhat similar to cooking dried beans--easy and slow. But there one big difference: nixtamalization.
[I've tried just cooking well dried field corn in a Crockpot--for 48 hours, actually--and it just never softens the outer coat of the kernels. While this may work with fresh field corn, it doesn't work with well dried field corn. It's edible, but very crunchy, and not particularly appetizing. I tossed it.]
You can make excellent hominy with field corn (In Mexico, this is called nixtamal), and if you do have a corn grinder, you can grind the nixtamal, and use it to make tamales (a stuffing of some sort, wrapped in thick corn paste--held together with a section of softened corn husk while cooking), tortillas (thin, un-risen, corn pancakes) , or tortilla chips (just drop quartered tortillas into hot oil, drain and salt).
Hominy can be made with any variety of dried corn. The dried corn is soaked in a hot, alkaline solution, to free the kernels of their tough coating. This allows the interior of the kernel to swell up by as much as 5 times.
Cal Mexicana is lime [calcium hydroxide, or Ca(OH)[sub]2[/sub]]. You can alternatively use pickling lime, which is purified and a little more concentrated. Don't bother with "Pickle Crisper", which is calcium chloride, since it won't work (despite recipes to the contrary on-line).
ITEMS REQUIRED:
- 4 cups of water
- 2 cups dried, shelled corn
- 3 Tbsp of cal (flake lime, calcium hydroxide) or only 2 Tbsp of pickling lime
- a stainless steel (or other non-reactive) 3-1/2 quart pot
PROCEDURE:
- shell the corn
- add lime and corn to boiling water
- remove from heat
- soak overnight
- rinse and remove loosened skins
The shelled corn and the lime are added to boiling water, stirred, then the pot is covered and the heat is turned off. Do this in the evening, and let it soak overnight.
White corn and lime added to boiling water.
In the morning, dump this into a colander, rinse it well, then use your hands to rub away any attached skins from the plump kernels, placing the naked hominy kernels into a separate bowl or strainer. You now have hominy (nixtamal). Rinse it again, thoroughly. At this stage, you can grind the raw nixtamal to make a paste, if you want a tamal, a tortilla or a chip. For plain old hominy, it's ready to cook.
Lime-treated and soaked corn, after first rinse--skins still on.
To remove the skins, take a small handful at a time, and roll it between your palms. The skins will then rinse off.
For serving as hominy, just simmer it in water to cover, with some butter, until it reaches the consistency you like. Occasionally taste a kernel as it cooks, but measure progress in hours, rather than minutes. You can even mash it with a potato masher, to produce creamy, fluffy grits. As it cooks, the cooking water becomes thicker and thicker, as some of the corn dissolves. Add salt.
The cleaned hominy begins its simmer, to further swell and soften.
This is partially mashed hominy grits, with salt, pepper and butter.
Bob
OldDinosaurWesH
Well-Known Member
Mmmm!
Wes H.
Wes H.
Yeah, mmmm I'm getting hungry now.
When you have the wet nixtamal you can grind it or mash it immediately after the process and you are ready to make fresh tortillas. A cast iron press is helpful here.
Field corn is best corn
When you have the wet nixtamal you can grind it or mash it immediately after the process and you are ready to make fresh tortillas. A cast iron press is helpful here.
Field corn is best corn
Harvesting Dried Beans
It's the first day of October. My Genuine Cornfield Pole Beans are progressively drying on the vines. They made decent green string beans, which do need to have the strings pulled prior to cooking. And prepared in that fashion, they taste just fine.
I decided to allow most of them to mature, so I could harvest the dried beans. What made the decision for me was not the strings in the cornfield beans, but the adequate production of my purple bush beans, which do not need stringing. So, I ate the purples fresh (which turn green when cooked), and left the cornfield beans for now.
How cute are these!
I won't know how the dried beans will taste until some time this winter. Each long pod produces 8 to 10 beans, so I'm expecting a couple of quarts of dried beans.
As soon as some pods on the vine have yellowed, and begin to shrivel, I pick those, and complete the drying on a seedling heat mat. This avoids repeated wetting by rain or dew, and minimizes the risk of mold on the pods.
Bob
It's the first day of October. My Genuine Cornfield Pole Beans are progressively drying on the vines. They made decent green string beans, which do need to have the strings pulled prior to cooking. And prepared in that fashion, they taste just fine.
I decided to allow most of them to mature, so I could harvest the dried beans. What made the decision for me was not the strings in the cornfield beans, but the adequate production of my purple bush beans, which do not need stringing. So, I ate the purples fresh (which turn green when cooked), and left the cornfield beans for now.
How cute are these!
I won't know how the dried beans will taste until some time this winter. Each long pod produces 8 to 10 beans, so I'm expecting a couple of quarts of dried beans.
As soon as some pods on the vine have yellowed, and begin to shrivel, I pick those, and complete the drying on a seedling heat mat. This avoids repeated wetting by rain or dew, and minimizes the risk of mold on the pods.
Bob
OldDinosaurWesH
Well-Known Member
Are those jumbo-sized beans? The photos don't really give any scale. Beans are like tobacco, there are lots and lots of different kinds.
Wes H.
Wes H.
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
Does drying them on the plant make it easier to remove the beans from the pods?
They are similar in size to dried pinto beans.
Way easier. Especially with beans that need to be stringed. First of all, the pods have got to be well dried in order to remove the beans. And drying on the vines assures that the beans are fully matured.
The pods of stringless beans crumble to pieces when you try to crack them open. That doesn't make it more difficult, but it does make a mess. The "string" varieties grow pods with greater mechanical strength, so that when you begin to crack a dried pod, it tends to split cleanly from one end to the other, and all the beans just drop out. Also, older varieties, like these Genuine Cornfield beans, lean more toward spontaneously cracking open, though this has occurred in only a few of my pods. Newer varieties are progressively selected (mostly by accident) for seed that doesn't spill onto the ground.
Bob
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
If you cut the plants off at the ground, they would dry out all at the same time. Would that help, or would you end up with lots of immature beans?
I'm not sure what it is that needs help. I am happy with the gradual amount of work.
Bob
Bob
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
I was just responding to the comment that some crack open on their own.
Anyways, my onions didn't do as well as I expected. The ones I started from seed did get much larger than the ones from sets, larger than any onions I've grown before. My father in law grew some of my seed stated onions, and they got much larger. He waters far more regularly than I do and it was a dry summer. I probably should have watered more. Also, I lost lots early in the spring to rabbits and the cold. I plan on starting them in a greenhouse I have yet to build for next year. I'll probably plant them later when they are a bit bigger and protect them from the rabbits.
Anyways, my onions didn't do as well as I expected. The ones I started from seed did get much larger than the ones from sets, larger than any onions I've grown before. My father in law grew some of my seed stated onions, and they got much larger. He waters far more regularly than I do and it was a dry summer. I probably should have watered more. Also, I lost lots early in the spring to rabbits and the cold. I plan on starting them in a greenhouse I have yet to build for next year. I'll probably plant them later when they are a bit bigger and protect them from the rabbits.
OldDinosaurWesH
Well-Known Member
The commercial dry bean growers wait till the whole plants are dry to harvest them with a wheat combine. They use a different header (made for peas and other legumes) and adjust the threshing mechanism inside to allow for the larger size seed. Where it gets dicey for dry bean growers, is if they get a rain just before harvest. The formerly dry pods will then split open and dump their seed on the ground. That is what you call a crop failure. Growing dry beans commercially has always been an iffy proposition. That is why they grow so many of them between Othello and Royal City, Washington, where it almost never rains. They get 5 - 7" of rain there per year. But they get unlimited amounts of irrigation water from Grand Coulee Dam, AKA: the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. There are about 560,000 acres in central Washington State being irrigated this way.
Wes H.
Wes H.
These blackberry blossoms are a boon for honeybees this time of year. There aren't too many plants putting out fresh blossoms, other than some fall chrysanthemums. My 10 day forecast keeps temps above 50ºF at night, but the blackberries will likely need about 3 or 4 weeks to offer ripe fruit from those pretty blossoms.
Today, I found a dozen or so hazelnuts still clinging to my two shrubs/trees. They need to be harvested by early August, then allowed to dry indoors. Otherwise the critters (squirrels, deer, yetis, etc.) pick them clean. These remaining few were near the interior of the foliage. Of the dozen, half were found to be empty, after I cracked them open. The 6 nice nuts were perfect for just munching. [Cracking a dozen hazelnuts is about my limit, at any one sitting. It's not as arduous as cracking, say black walnuts, but it's still a chore.]
The cigar is nice filler, nice binder and a WLT Dominican binder as wrapper. The honeybee didn't care what it was, but the hazel trees went nuts over it.
Bob
OldDinosaurWesH
Well-Known Member
My friend in Seattle never gets any nuts off his hazel-nut tree. The pesky squirrels get them all.
If you ever run across Macadamia nuts in the shell...Expect a real workout. We finally figured out how to open them with a pair of vise-grips. Black Walnuts...no thanks! They taste good but getting them out of the shell...
I thought Yeti's were from Tibet. I used to know a couple of guys who were convinced that the Sasquatch resided here in our mountains...Haven't seen any yet. But, apparently the legislature believes in them. In their infinite wisdom, they passed a law back in the 80's making it illegal to kill the Sasquatch. I carry a large-bore handgun with me when I go to the mountains just in case...I meet a bear! Or a cougar (not the middle-aged type). We actually have those.
Good luck with the fruit! May you harvest many berries.
Wes H.
If you ever run across Macadamia nuts in the shell...Expect a real workout. We finally figured out how to open them with a pair of vise-grips. Black Walnuts...no thanks! They taste good but getting them out of the shell...
I thought Yeti's were from Tibet. I used to know a couple of guys who were convinced that the Sasquatch resided here in our mountains...Haven't seen any yet. But, apparently the legislature believes in them. In their infinite wisdom, they passed a law back in the 80's making it illegal to kill the Sasquatch. I carry a large-bore handgun with me when I go to the mountains just in case...I meet a bear! Or a cougar (not the middle-aged type). We actually have those.
Good luck with the fruit! May you harvest many berries.
Wes H.
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