Dave's Kitchen: Making hominy

Dave's been busy in his kitchen lately, while most of us slowed down as gardening season winds to a close and the harvest is preserved and stored.  Here's what he wrote to me today:

I use "Feed Corn" purchased from a local feed store to make Hominy
and to grind as "Corn Meal".  Many will say that this is not a "Healthy"
practice but I dont accept that argument as a general rule. That debate
can be pursued in other places.

I dont use "Deer Corn"; it is usually full of garbage, bits of cob and less
than perfect kernels. Also it doesn't usually have any limits of "Aflatoxin"
content like much of the feed corn, and all the corn marketed for human
consumption does.


How To Make Hominy

Pick and clean 2 quarts of corn.  The kernels can be poured on a table

top and picked through as one would do for dry beans. Reject any
kernels that are broken, damaged or otherwise not perfect. Cracked
kernels will break down in the soaking process and "Gum Up" the
works, making the finished hominy harder to rinse clean.

Place the cleaned/washed corn in a 4-gallon granitware pan and fill it
to about 4 inches of the top. Add 1 rounded tablespoon of Lime(Pickling
Lime from the Grocery store will work) per pint of corn and gently mix
it into the water. Be careful not to let the dust get airborne, it can be

hazardous to breathe. It may seem like a lot of water for the amount
of corn but at the end of the the "Liming", you will see why.

Place the pot on the stove and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to just
under a boil. Cover and let it sit for about 4-6 hours, stirring occasionally.

When the kernels have doubled or even tripled in size, pinch one between
your fingers and if there is no "Dry" material inside, it is ready to rinse.
Drain the lime water and rinse the corn in clean water and return it to
the pot.

Fill the pot with warm water and, using your hands, gently rub the
kernels together to remove any dissolved shell that may still be on
them, and rinse. Repeat until the water is clean and clear.

At this point the "Hominy" is finished and can be eaten. I usually
dehydrate and grind it into meal and use it to make cornbread, but it
can eaten fresh, cooked with peppers and onions and eaten like corn,
or made into tortillas. It's also good cooked into soups or chopped fine
in a food processor and added to Chili.

To dehydrate/dry the Hominy, it can be spread on a flat surface in a
warm, dry and clean location that is free of insects and other pests.
To dry in a dehydrator, spread the kernels on your tray in a thin
layer and dry at medium heat. If the dehydrator heat is set too
high, it may "Glaze" the outsides of the kernels and seal in the
moisture.

This batch of Hominy is destined to be ground into "Meal" so I
left much of the "Germ" in during the rinsing.  It adds flavor, fat
and other nutrients. If you are going to use the hominy as a table
dish, you may want to rinse the germ out for a better appearance.

 Two quarts of whole kernel corn straight from the feed
bag, along with the "cast offs" seperated from it. This bag of
corn had more broken kernels than most I buy but it was still
a good clean bag of grain.

The limed and rinsed kernels, ready
to eat or dehydrate.

 Kernels spread on the dehydrator tray, the layer is

thin enough to allow air flow around the hominy to speed the
drying process.

The finished dried hominy, ready to store or grind
into meal for use as "Grits", in cornbread or other recipes.

 

 

 

Thanks, Dave, for sharing this with us.  It sounds like something that would be good in Taco soup, among other things!  I'm looking forward to trying to make my own hominy.  We've always bought it in cans from the store. I love learning how to make things myself.   I appreciate all that I've learned from people as I've worked on this blog.

 

Please keep sending your emails with comments, suggestions, and questions!

 

Susan

povertyprepping@yahoo.com



Feeding your garden

A lot of people add kitchen scraps to a compost pile for enriching their garden dirt.  I've always heard that it should primarily be scraps from fruits, vegetables, and grains.  That's what I've done for years, saving those things for composting and feeding the meat and dairy scraps to our dog.  Just like humans who thrive on the occasional treat or junk food, our dog thrived on the occasional variation from her diet of dog food.

 

The point of this isn't our dog, it's that I neglected to think about other things I could be composting or scattering on the garden.  Egg shells are one.  We dried and crunched them and mixed them with our homemade layer feed for the chickens, to give them extra calcium for good, strong egg shells.  Then I read in a gardening book that egg shells add calcium to the soil, which is good for growing potatoes in particular, but also good for other vegetables.
 

A lot of people probably already know that, but I didn't until a couple years ago.  We still feed some of the egg shells back to the chickens, but a big portion of them are crumbled and scattered on the garden now.  Sometimes if we're in a hurry we just dump them in with the compost pile, but if the garden isn't too muddy and I have the time, I scatter them.
 

Another thing that adds minerals to the dirt is tea or coffee grounds.  We dump the coffee grounds in a can until it's full, then either add it to the compost or scatter it around the garden.  I set tea bags on the window ledge behind the kitchen sink to dry, then tear them open and dump the tea grounds into an old hot chocolate can.  When it's full, I do the same thing; I add it to the compost pile or scatter it on the garden soil.


 

Here are a bunch of tea bags that I'm tearing open.  The empty ones are at the upper right, and the grounds are in the can.  This was back in the summer when we were making pitchers full of iced tea and used a lot of tea bags in a short time.

 

Coffee and tea are acidic, so be careul not to add it too thickly to one area.  The exception is acid-loving plants like blueberries, and to a lesser extent, strawberries and plum trees.  I spread coffee grounds heavily around my blueberry bushes a couple times a year, and lightly the rest of the summer.  I haven't bought commercial "blueberry food" for a few years since the coffee grounds seem to have kept the soil in balance for my bushes.  Our plum trees and strawberry plants are thriving as well.

 

So there's three things from your kitchen that are often thrown away that you can use to feed your soil!

 

From the mailbox:

 

November 28, 2012

 

    "I came across your blog this morning, much to my pleasure! I read with great interest the post on Feeding Your Garden and it brought to mind a few seemingly unconventional things I compost that I thought might be useful.

First off, I'd say you don't need to take the time to tear open all those tea bags. We don't drink much tea but when we do, we just toss the whole bag (leaves, bags, string, tag, and even the little package, if its paper) into our kitchen compost bin with all the rest of the "green" waste. I've been successfully putting my coffee grounds AND filters in my compost pile for a couple of years now. The filters seem to decompose just as fast as the rest of the typical kitchen "green" waste. I have never seen any of them in the pile without seeing the other stuff too.

As you know, egg shells are great in the pile, too. I try to crush them up but probably half of them are just cracked in half. Crushed or not doesn't seem to slow decomposition.

I also put shredded junk mail in the pile too. Nothing too shiny or heavily printed, but letters, envelopes and stuff like that. I add it when I'm turning the pile and mix it in until it "looks" like any more would be too much, if you know what I mean. :)

Peanut shells have also been no problem, but those I did see when I sifted the compost to add it to the garden this spring. I figured it just added more "fiber" to help keep the soil from clumping. By the time I harvested, the shells seemed to be gone.

We're physically doing our best in our own little "more-urban-than-suburban-but-definitely-far-from-rural" homestead. I daily long for the day when we move to our own self-sustaining, off-the-grid homestead. Being dependent on government service like water concerns me greatly. Plus all the crazy covenants, rules, laws, and other restrictions on anything that might facilitate a little independence like no chickens and restrictions on allowable garden size, plants, and location, etc is a difficult and frustrating way to live. The neighbor can have several wild pit bulls that can rip my head off but I can't have a couple of hens for "city" fresh eggs or a tomato plant in my front yard? :O

Anyway, I admire your courage and commitment to your lifestyle and appreciate sharing your experiences and knowledge.

RandyP"

 

Thanks, Randy, for your email and your ideas.

 

Susan

povertyprepping@yahoo.com 

Dave's Kitchen

 

Far, far away, in the land of Texas, I have a good friend named Dave.  Dave lives in his garden, using his house as a place to cook, can, and dehydrate food, and, on rare occasions, sleep.  In his climate he can grow things most of the year.  While I envy that, it's not what I most admire about Dave.

 

What I admire most about Dave is the canning and dehydrating he does.  I've never even heard of some of the things this guy has stuffed in a jar and run through his canner.  Things like pickled watermelon rinds and candied sweet potatoes.  Or dehydrating sweet pickles, eggs, yogurt (yes, yogurt!), sweet breads (pumpkin, banana, etc.), chili, and leftover spaghetti.  He also salts and smokes food to preserve it.

 

As a regular feature of this blog we're going to start checking in with Dave and see what he's up to.  We visited him a couple of weeks ago, and he's the real deal.  And if he's not enough of the real deal, you ought to meet his daughters!!!  What an amazing family.  I hope you enjoy and learn from the things I'll be posting from and about them.

 

 This is just one of the herb beds Dave planted.  This is Basil.  He grows and dries bushels of it every year! 

This is some of Dave's dried basil, vacuum-sealed in Food Saver bags.

 



The bag in back is dried Okra, and in front is dried sweet pickles.

Dried sweet pickles?

 

In a message earlier this year Dave wrote:

 

"Most of what I dehydrate is just regular raw fruit, vegetables, eggs, cooked beans and rice, and left overs,and cooked pasta.

Yesterday I made a chicken and broccoli dish to serve over rice and there was alot left over(intentionally) so I mixed it with the rice and put it into the dehydrator and just took it out, bone dry, only a fraction of the space and it rehydrated great.

My dehydrator was some of the best money I have ever spent(would be lost without it), next to my tiller that is.

While I was waiting for the chicken and rice to finish up, I canned 30 pounds of chicken leg quarters. I used to can it bone-in but I saw that most people cooked it first. I tried it that way, and now I bake it first, then de-bone it and can it."



Candied sweet potatoes (left) and  Mustang Grape Juice

 

Many of Dave's emails are sent at 1-something or 3-something o'clock in the morning while he's waiting for a canner load of something to finish up.  Or he's about to put something in the dehydrator.  I often wonder what he runs on, because he keeps on running.  Usually he's been out in the garden all day, then prepping, processing, and preserving food most of the night.

 

So, pull up a chair and grab a bite of candied watermelon rind (it really is good!) and we'll learn together.  Look for a new post from Dave's kitchen about twice a month.

 

Meanwhile, thanks for all the emails of support after the death of my sister-in-law, and thanks for the prayers and good wishes.  Sadly, after the funeral my 81-year old Father-in-law had a stroke and he's still in the hospital.  He's in rehab/physical therapy right now while they determine what he still has, what he lost, and what they think he can get back.  We're still in Kansas helping out.

 

Take care, everyone.

Susan

 

 

 

 



You are amazing people!

The entries are coming in for the contest, and there are a lot of you out there with great ideas for food storage items and how to use them! 

I've also been enjoying the personal things some of you are telling me about your lives.  There have been stories about how some readers found themselves in unexpected hardship and how they got through it.  Quite often it seems to be what led people to start being "preppers", to start storing food and other necessary items.

It got me thinking how nice it would be to share some of the stories with you.  I'm sending emails to them for permission.  If anyone else has something they want to tell about their life, please email me.  It can be something simple and short, or more lengthy.  Your privacy will be protected and I won't post your email address.

There are also some good testimonials and stories on the reviews for the book on Amazon.  Drop back by where you bought the book and read the reviews.  I've enjoyed hearing from people. 

Susan
povertyprepping@yahoo.com