THINGS TO EAT AND DO AND WHATEVER

I did it. I bought a grain rinder a while back. A few days ago I bought 50 pounds of feed corn. You buy feed corn because it doesn't have poisons on the kernals like seed corn does. This is important is if you are not suicidal. The feed corn is for your animals which are very expensive and thus not poisonous. They will feed anything to a human but a steer is worth a lot of money! Think about it.

Next thing up was the cleaning process. The corn has to be gone through and all the crap like little bitty rocks and pieces of stem and other things taken out of it. The corn looks pretty clean until you start going through it. I would say it is about 5% or maybe 8% junk. But that is what the machine harvests so there ain't much you can do about it. Except clean it, of course.

With everything in place we gleefully attempted to grind out first cornmeal. A first for the modern Boone family. All my kids can grovel at my feet with protestations of "We are not worthy." The grain mill had been washed and screwed tightly to the kitchen table. A suitably shallow receptical had been placed to catch the precious meal as it came out of the mill. We began. Yuck. The first grinding was the size of the peanuts in Krackel candy. Not good. Ace mechanic Michael figured out that the screw mechanism holding the burrs together was loose. We started again. And it worked! The damn thing actually did as advertised! Will wonders never cease!

Aha! I was going to be King of the Grindermen. Nothing could stop me. I would have dominance and pre-eminence over all lesser studs. The masses would bow in awe. But the movement of the operation soon caused an aching in my muscles. See, it was a handgrinder and not an electric grinder. You can't use an electric grinder in a grid-down situation. Boy. That muscle ache started getting a lot of my attention. My wife noticed and asked if she could do it for a while. I merely sneered and said no. The I let her have at it. Ego doesn't enter in to survivalism. Or does it? She gave it a merry go and then I tool it back and finished the litle dab we were going to have.

We had it for supper mixed with Pinto beans, Hamburger, and the corn flour, which was really powdery. I couldn't believe we could grind it so fine. I might try wheat next and see if I can get really nice bread flour.

While waiting for supper to finish my wife got out the Sally Fallon book called Nourishing Traditions and started reading to me about the effect of Pelegra amd how it comes from a deficiency of Vitamin B-3. And the Vitamin B-3 deficiency comes from not soaking your corn flour in lime water over night. Damn! She got me with the grinding pain and them stabbed me with the B-3. I tell ya', I didn't have much left at that point. I was either gonna cut my own throat or go into saintly mode. I chose to become saintly. And that caused me to read a few paragraphs of Nourishing Traditions that I hadn't read before. Egads. Studying how to soak cornmeal! But what are you going to do when the broad is standing right there quoting chapter and verse from her Sally Fallon Bible? I never liked Bible Beaters very much and this merely strengthened my dislike of them.

I'll quote here from Ms Fallon's book: Traditional recipes call for soaking corn or corn flour in lime water. This releases nicotinamide (Vitamin B-3), which otherwise remains bound up in the grain. Soaking also improves the amino acid quality of proteins in the germ. If you use corn products often, the simple precaution of soaking corn flour in lime water will help avoid the Vitamin B-3 deficiency disease Pellegra with it's cruel symptoms of sore skin, fatigue, and mental disorders. (Now I have to do this to keep from going nuts!) To make lime water place about 1 inch of DOLOMITE POWDER in a two 2 quart jar. Fill with filtered water, shake well, cover tightly, and let stand over night. The powder will settle and the resultant clear water is lime water. Store in a cool place (it's not necessary to refrigerate) and use for soaking cornmeal by pouring out carefully. You may also use masa flour which is cornmeal that has been prepared by soaking corn kernals in lime water before grinding. However, like all whole grain flours, cornmeal quickly goes rancid and develops a bitter taste, so it's better to grind you own corn.

And I thought typing a daily blog was tough.

But we ate the cornmeal in with the beans and the hamburger and it was good. Once I get the lime water trip down pat I will get a complete protein with just the corn and beans. Touche, corporate food America! Survivalists 1 Aunt Jemima 0
***************
FOOD REPORT FROM MISSISSIPPI

The latet bath of Ale

Is also the last batch. The wort about to be bottled is lager.

But this is a fine, fine dark ale, potent, tasty. Very potent.

About to put in 4 rows of sweet and super-sweet corn.

And some cukes. And okra. And green beans.

Been eating sweet peppers for a few days now, and the frilly leafy lettuce is getting big enough to eat. Some spinach is taking off, is about ready to start cutting leaves. Jalapenos are about 3 inches long and about ready to eat. Not up to heat yet, but will be fine for eating, not yet too hot. Have to wait for the heat to make real 'pickling' type, to make hot pepper sauce. Have tabascos and habaneros, but they aren't much past just starting to bloom yet. I have tomatoes bigger than golf balls already on the short tomato vines, 9 of them... vines, not tomatoes. Each vine has 2 or 3 tomatoes each. Sillver dollar up past golf ball sized. Weird on such short vines. The suckers I cut off the one seem to be doing well in 16oz cups full of peat moss..

Tilled the two 40 foot, 6-8 foot wide rows for melons today-- again. The third time. It had 'bahia' grass, grows in round clumps of the toughest shit you have ever seen. The tiller won't touch it, have to worry out the foot-wide clumps with a mattock. It is TOUGH, take major effort even with the mattock. But I got the last of it out this time. It's been limed, one more turning, which will happen in a couple of weeks, probably, when the melons and cantaloupes which are now growing in 16 ounce cups are up and ready to plant in the ground.

If all goes well, I will be absolutely overwhelmed with produce in a couple of months. Homebrew production shall continue.

Mike
Farmer Kemp
*******************
Michael sez:

Dolomite (pronounced /ˈdɒləmaɪt/) is the name of a sedimentary carbonate rock and a mineral, both composed of calcium magnesium carbonate CaMg(CO3)2 found in crystals.

Dolomite rock (also dolostone) is composed predominantly of the mineral dolomite. Limestone that is partially replaced by dolomite is referred to as dolomitic limestone, or in old U.S. geologic literature as magnesian limestone. Dolomite was first described in 1791 as the rock by the French naturalist and geologist, Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu (1750-1801) for exposures in the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy.

This is the stuff you make lime water with. It is not just limstone powder. Be sure you nose around and find the right stuff. It exists in small deposits but mothing big.
**************
NEWS FROM A PREPPER

well,..we bought 80 lbs of rice at $11.56 per 20lb,...its went up $2 on 20 lbs this week.
also picked up 60 lbs more of pinto beans,..they went up 25 cents a pound!!!! Prepping never ends.....it gets to be a burn out at times,....that is untill I see my kids and grandkids and remember why we do this!. Bought this at the local Wally world today.
Also got a great deal from a friend on a Remington semi-auto 12. gauge,...can never have too many firearms!

I read an article on another blog today asking if TSHTF has already happened according to what events have rolled down the highway since 9/11. I must admit that its at least possible that America is a dead man walking,...too dumbed down by the media to realize it yet.
Michael,..I see no use in trying to hold on to anything in the "system" any more. I see no fixing it anymore...... As Paul from the scriptures stated,.."I consider all things as lost".
We all have our ideals and our dreams and down deep we have a small thought in the back of our minds that says "America will pull thru,..it will all work out" I dont think that is even rational anymore,..do you?
I see us all as a snowball headed for hell. Its a car wreck happening in slow motion.
Sadly many of our fellow country men refuse to believe it. They think Govt.,..or church or faith or just plain dumb damn luck will make it all better I wished to GOD that was so!!!
But im going to wish in one and crap in the other,..see which one fills up first.

Keep up the good fight my friend!

Mark