Surviving the Hard Times

I'm amused when I read gourmet cooking magazines and read the menu in some restaurants and see polenta. If you've don't know about polenta, the simple definition is a thick, cornmeal mush. What does that have to do with dog food? Well, growing up as a poor kid on a farm with numerous dogs, my Mom often made food for the dogs. She'd start with some leftover grease in a big cast iron skillet, pour in milk and when it was hot she'd start adding cornmeal. Milk was cheap most of the year since we had a milk cow. We grew corn, shelled and ground it by hand. So corn was inexpensive too. As it cooked, the cornmeal mush thickened and table scraps were add. My dogs knew the meaning of the words, "Mom cooked." They sometimes turned their noses up at commercial dog food.

Years later, I moved to the Pacific Northwest and encountered polenta in restaurants. It looked familiar and made me chuckle. Here was a basic simple food being served in restaurants accompanying expensive entrees. It looked familiar. A bit more jazzed up that what Mom used to cook but basically the same thing.

Polenta is simple. It consists of water, cornmeal, maybe some salt and other flavorings. Spice it up or dress it down. It's simply boiled, allowed to set up and then baked or fried.

Polenta

3 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cornmeal

Spray a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Bring 3 cups water and the salt to a boil. Reduce the heat and gradually add the cornmeal. Pour in a thin, slow stream while whisking constantly so that lumps don't form. Cook, stirring frequently, until thickened, 5-10 minutes. If you want to spice it up, stir in a 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes.

Spread the polenta in the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 30 minutes.

Remove polenta from the loaf pan and slice in 1/2 inch slices. Place slices on the baking sheet. At this point you can add as many calories as you'd like by buttering the polenta, or topping with cheese, or leave it plain. Bake uncovered at 350 F for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly spray a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Bake until polenta develops a nice color.


Another cornmeal mush type dish comes to us from Africa. It is called Ugali. Ugali is made with a white maize flour. Although many recipes suggest that grits or yellow cornmeal may be substituted. Ugali can vary in consistency from a soupy porridge to a thicker dough. Since ugali is traditionally eaten by rolling it into a bite-size ball, creating an indention and using it to scoop up a stew or curry.

Ugali

4 cups water
1 tsp salt
2 cups white maize flour

Over high heat, bring water and salt to a boil. Add the flour slowly, 1 tablespoon at a time, while stirring constantly with a whisk to avoid lumps. Continue until all the flour is used.

Reduce heat to medium-low and cook until mixture reduces and thickens, and pulls away from the sides of the pot, about 5-6 minutes.

Let sit for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat. Let sit another minute, then serve.

Makes 4 servings.


There used to be tales of elderly people buying and eating canned cat and dog food because it was what they could afford. Those canned foods have gotten expensive. I think we can eat more nutritiously without resorting to canned pet foods. Just stir up a batch of polenta or ugali. I wonder now if the family pets knew what wonderful things my mother was cooking up for them. I think they did since they often rejected the store bought dog food.

While watching the evening news, I caught a segment on how to eat on a budget. It was good segment that extolled the virtues of brown rice, eggs and beans. However, the lovely lady shopping grabbed the box of brown rice and the carton on eggs. Perhaps she didn’t want to be seen lugging a 25 lb bag of rice or beans. But the real value in these foods can be found by buying in bulk. For the price of two cartons of eggs, you can purchase 5 dozen eggs in a bulk package. That’s like getting three dozen eggs for free. Just ask neighbors to save egg cartons for you and repackage them when you get home.

If your pantry won’t hold a 25 or 50 pound bag of rice or beans and you must store it in the garage, be sure to find a food safe container to hold your grains and beans. I hear that in Utah, Wal-Mart carries food safe buckets and lids. You can also find food safe buckets at restaurant suppliers or online at places such as Emergency Essentials. If you’re cheap like me, visit a local Chinese restaurant. Why Chinese? Soy sauce comes in 5 gallon buckets. Chinese restaurants use lots of soy sauce. These buckets often go into the trash. I find that, after a wash with bleach and a good airing, that the smell of the soy sauce is negligible. So you can accomplish several goals at once. You can save a plastic bucket from the landfill and provide safe storage for your big bag of rice or beans.

Many people, whether because of their religious or political beliefs, have decided to keep at least a year’s supply of food. Long before the government decided that the country was in a recession, I decided that extra food was a good thing to have on hand. After going organizing my extremely deep pantry shelves, I discovered that many of the cans of vegetables had gotten lost and were out dated. The texture and color of cans that were opened just wasn’t appetizing…even if they retained any nutritional value. This experience made me begin to look for foods that remain appetizing, edible and nutritious during longer storage times. Beans, grains, and dry pasta all met those requirements. So we know that these products store well and most of us know how to cook pasta but what about those dry beans and whole grains? First let's talk about those whole grains. If you decide to stock hard red or white wheat, you are going to need some method of grinding or cracking the wheat. Hand mills for grinding the wheat range in price from $75 to $400+. You should take this cost into consideration before you decide to store a supply of wheat or other grain. I've found that 1 cup of wheat berries as they are called will grind out to 2 cups of whole wheat flour. This is also a good workout for the arm muscles. There are electric mills but that seems to defeat the purpose of also being prepared for an emergency. I'd prefer not to be dependent on electricity to grind my wheat into flour.

Why stock whole wheat berries? Whole grains retain their freshness and nutrient content better when they are in their original form. Once ground into flour, the wheat berry has many surfaces which are exposed to the air where nature begins the process of decomposition. It is always better to store the products as whole grains rather than flour or cornmeal. Of course, for value and savings, I buy 50 lb bags of flour and store it in 5 gallon buckets. Flour has many uses in cooking, from breads to thickening gravies. When most of us think of bread we think of fluffy white bread. However, there are many delicious flat breads that are easy to make. These include naan bread, tortillas, and a camp favorite called bannock. All of these breads are basically flour, water, salt and perhaps a bit of yeast or baking powder to get a rise and fat in the form of oil or bacon grease. Simple stuff and easy to make over a fire with some cast iron cookware.

Since we're talking about buying in bulk and saving money, I have to let the folks on the West coast in on a great place to get bargains in bulk. Cash & Carry Smart Food Service looks like a restaurant supply business, which it is, however, it also caters to the general public. Their sign says wholesale only, don't let that scare you away. Just take into account that most things are packaged in bulk quantities for restaurants. You won't be able to walk in and buy a couple of onions...you can buy a 10 pound bag of onions. Now this next special doesn't fall into my no electricity emergency food supply category, it is a great buy. FlavorPac frozen vegetables in a 5 lb bag for $3.48. Frozen mixed fruit in a 5 lb bag 6.49. Shredded Cheddar Cheese 5 lbs for $7.97. Cash & Carry is also a great place to pick up the 5 dozen egg packs, milk and cream. These are the specials for my local store. The store in your area may be featuring different items. When looking for bargains, don't be afraid to venture into different types of stores. The worst that can happen is that you walk around and leave without buying. The upside may be some terrific bargains.

I also stock buckets of beans in various varieties. I've found that a one cup of dried beans will expand to a 2 1/2 cups when soaked and cooked. Many recipes call for 1 lb of a particular bean variety. For kidney beans, this is approximately 1 1/2 cup. For lima, navy, and soy beans, this is about 2 1/3 cup. One pound of split peas is equal to roughly 2 cups. For lentils, you'll need 2 1/3 cups to equal one pound. A 15 or 25 pound bag of dried beans contains a lot of servings. You can overcome some of the inconvenience of cooking with dried beans by soaking them, draining and then storing in the refrigerator. If you have time, you can go a step further and cook until tender and then store in the refrigerator. Think of lentils as the convenience food of dried beans. A lentil dish can be prepared in about 30 minutes. Dried beans do require a little more effort on your part but time is money. Do you want to pay someone else to prepare your beans or would you rather have that money to buy more beans?

As promised, I'm stopping back by with a few tips and recipes for beans. Most recipes simply state to cook beans until tender. Some will give an estimated time but the cooking time for beans will vary based on factors such as size of bean and time of storage. Older beans take longer to cook. Peas and smaller beans take less than an hour. Larger beans may take longer; lima beans are an exception to the large bean rule. Lima beans may tenderize in less than an hour. Soy beans while small, may take 3 to 4 hours to tenderize. Since the cooking times are longer for beans, for efficiency, cook more than one pound at once and freeze or refrigerate those not needed for your recipe.

Sounds strange, doesn't it? But so does rice as a sweetener. It's all in the treatment and the additional ingredients. Potato candy uses three ingredients: a boiled potato, powdered sugar and peanut butter. It's a simple old fashioned candy. UPDATE: I found my actual recipe. The candy should have a teaspoon of vanilla and a dash of salt.

First scrub a potato and boil it in a saucepan of water. Yesterday, I used just an average sized potato from a 10 pound bag. It was about the size of my fist. A woman's fist. How long to boil? Until you can stick a fork in several places and it goes in easily. You don't want to have any hard undercooked areas. Those undercooked areas are very hard to mash.

Once the potato has boiled until tender, take it out. Just stick a fork in it and use the fork to hold it while you pick the skin off with a paring knife. It will be one of the easiest potatoes you've ever peeled.

While the potato is still hot begin to work in the powdered sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla and a dash of salt. I like to use a pie plate and a fork for this process. Watch a Christmas special or the falling snow while doing this...you're going to be at it for a little while. I worked 3/4 or more of a bag of powdered sugar into the potato I cooked. There is no exact amount since the size of the potato will vary. Just keep adding powdered sugar until you get a stiff dough that you'll be able to spread out. Don't get too stiff though, you will need to roll the dough like a jelly roll.

Once you've decided that you have a stiff dough, it's time to spread it out. I used plastic wrap on my counter. Waxed paper probably would have been better. What I didn't do but should have is to put some 'bench flour' aka powdered sugar down before I started working my dough out into a rectangle. It stuck to the plastic wrap a bit. Just use extra powdered sugar in the same way you use flour when working with bread dough. Use a spatula, your hands, whatever works to manipulate the dough into an even thickness and shape. About 1/4 inch is a good thickness.

Once you've got a rectangle of dough, spread on the peanut butter. If you really love peanut butter, put it on thicker.

Next, roll the dough like a jelly roll. I roll from the longest side because I want to be able to cut a lot of pieces of candy from this. In fact, once I get the candy rolled, I cut the roll in half and then roll it like I'm making a play dough snake. It will get thinner and longer and let you cut more pieces of candy.

After cutting the candy, place it on a cookie sheet and let it dry. Without drying, the moisture remaining in the dough may grow mold if just tossed into an airtight container.

This is a super sweet candy. It's basically powdered sugar but it's good.

The Northwest has been hit by wave after wave of snow and ice. Ok, when I lived in the middle of the country, I wouldn't have even blinked at this stuff. Ok, now that I've got the vehicle properly outfitted for the winter, I'm not too concerned about it now. Unfortunately, there tend to be a lot of other people who don't get their vehicle outfitted and aren't concerned about the weather. They're the ones that you sit around and watch on TV as they clog up the freeway and prevent the snow plows from doing their job.

So what does snow and ice have to do with pizza? Delivery or the lack thereof. I sometimes make pizza at home. I use an old pizza stone that's in two pieces. (Never put anything frozen on the pizza stone that has heated in the oven...cracking will ensue!) Sometimes I use a dough with yeast. Sometimes I just use flour, salt and water. The yeast dough is a soft dough. The flour, salt, water dough produces a dough that is crisper; more like a cracker.

Here's the recipe that I use when I think about pizza early in the afternoon and have time for the dough to rise.

Pizza Dough

1 cup warm water (105-115°F)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 package (¼ oz.) active dry yeast (one package of yeast = 2¼ teaspoon of yeast)

Combine the water sugar and yeast. Proof until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2¼ cups all purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 Tablespoon Kosher salt

Mix flours and salt. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, use it.

2 Tablespoons olive oil

Add oil to yeast mixture once it has proofed, then pour into the flour mixture. Knead by hand or on low speed on the mixer for 10 minutes.

Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turning to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 2 hours.

Punch dough down and divide into four balls, pinching the bottoms closed. Cover with plastic wrap, and let wrise in a warm place another hour.

I don't tend to buy cake flour. In my latest experiment (cooking is always an experiment for me) instead of adding more white all-purpose flour, I grabbed a container of hand ground wheat flour. I wondered if it would make it too hard. Instead, it seemed to make a softer dough. Way back, many, many moons ago, I was in 4-H. I actually have a trophy for making bread. Our 4-H project book had an experiment using various flours. It was designed to teach the gluten content of various flours. I learned it at the time but the many moons have removed that information from my memory. Maybe I'll have to search for that information and learn it again.

When I'm ready to use my pizza dough, I roll it out into 5-8" rounds or semi-rounds or just irregular shapes. The pizza stone has been heating in the oven. After I get the dough rolled out, I toss it on the hot stone. No toppings. I just want to firm up the dough a little bit. So I cook it on one side and then flip it over and cook the over side for a minute or so. I begin topping the cooked crusts while I cook more crusts.

The pleasant surprise on my last batch of pizzas was the bubbling! Yes, the pizza rounds turned into big round balloons. This was a pleasant surprise. I have been trying to make pita type bread for some time and haven't been able to get that ballooning. I have more experimenting to do. I must learn the reason for my success. Was it the addition of the wheat flour? Was it the use of a yeast dough? My naan bread recipe is supposed to puff and doesn't use yeast. I've never achieved a really successful balloon with the naan bread recipe. So if you like pita bread, this recipe with some wheat flour might do the trick for you.

I've been promising cornbread and haven't got around to making it or writing about it even. I've turned over the cornbread duties to my husband. First he was hooked on the little cornbread muffin mixes that come in the blue box. Yuck. I'd never had cornbread from a mix. It was nothing like my mamma's cornbread. There was no taste. But most importantly, there was no texture. It was almost like a flour muffin with some corn flavor.

Then our finances got better. My husband bought the bag of Marie Callender's cornbread mix. Better but still not mamma's cornbread. Again that corn texture was missing. The cornbread was too light and airy. It wasn't dense and crumbling with a texture like, well, corn meal. It didn't have that dark bottom from cooking in a cast iron skillet.

That all changed one night when my husband wanted cornbread. I dug in the too deep shelves in the pantry and found his bag of Marie Callender's mix. One whiff told the story, the fat in it had gone rancid. Now in a really bad situation, any of us would probably eat it just for the nutritional value. But things weren't that bad yet. So I chucked it out for the birds and grabbed my handy journal book of recipes. No, it isn't my Mamma's recipe for cornbread. There never was a recipe for her cornbread. She just made it. Measurements were "a little bit", "maybe a little more", etc. As a kid trying to learn to cook it frustrated me to tears. Now days if you tried to stop Mamma in the middle of cooking and work out the measurements, it would probably frustrate her into leaving the kitchen. It's just not the way she cooks.

What I found in my recipe journal that night was a recipe for cornbread cooked in a dutch oven. Close enough. The ingredient list looked close to the things I'd remembered Mamma using. It made a good starting point. It's gone through a little bit of mutation since that night.

Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread

1 cup yellow corn meal
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tablespoon honey or 1/4 cup sugar

Grease your cast iron skillet (10-12") and start it heating in a 425°F oven while you mix the cornbread.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Then add the milk, eggs, and honey. Pour the batter into your heated cast iron skillet. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.


I prefer honey in my cornbread. My husband perfers the no mess method of adding a bit of sugar. You can add more, less or none at all.

Next up, flour tortillas cooked in the fireplace.

I hope none of us end up in the poor house. Do poor houses even exist anymore? I don’t think so. I think we replaced those with our welfare system. No more working on the poor farm. No more working on the prison farm. Just the free handouts. It’s a system that I don’t believe can be sustained. We need to learn how to do things in a sustainable way. Whether it’s building from sustainable, renewable products, growing our own food or governing our country, we need to focus on whether we can sustain the ideas that we propose. We need to approach the world as though it were a marathon. Can we sustain this pace? Do we need to make adjustments now so we can make it to the end of the race, or will we drop out before the end?

Shelter, water, and food are essential to life. Shelter is generally provided and often an afterthought in today’s society. People are beginning to think more about it in these last few months. People are beginning to feel threatened. The thought is finally beginning to intrude, “Where will I go if I lose my house?” The old ideas of thrift are beginning to return. So where can we be more thrifty? Where can we cut back and save money?

So back to the poor house food or how we can pinch pennies to stay in our house and out of the poor house. This isn’t going to be about clipping coupons and buying in bulk. There are other people who write about those areas. This is more about a trip down memory lane to the rocky hills of a farm. I’ve written about the brown beans, the lamb’s quarter and poke salad. There are other areas that seem like a luxury now. There were steaks, hamburger, heart and liver. Now days I don’t cook steak often, nor use much red meat. Not because I’m a vegetarian or opposed to red meat, it’s the price of meat plain and simple. It would almost be sacrilege in my family to be a vegetarian, I come from a family that raises beef cattle. It’s not a big operation. There are no feedlots. There are no veal shacks. The pastures aren’t overgrazed (unless it’s a dry year and things get really tight then the grass gets skimpy). There was a steer that was fed up every year for eating. He was sent to the local slaughterhouse (There’s another small town business that’s disappearing) to be packaged and then stored in the huge freezer. Since we weren’t buying the meat in the grocery store it was cheap for us. I doubt I’ll be able to feed my children the way my mother fed me. There will be less meat loaf, little or no steak, and fewer hamburgers.

I read on various blogs and forums about people buying bags of rice. White rice is good. I like white rice but I think it could get old really quick by itself. One of my memories of childhood is tuna gravy over rice. People don't seem to make gravy anymore. With all the weight loss concerns, we've been taught to leave off the gravy. It's fattening and unnecessary. Tuna gravy is just a white sauce/gravy with a can of tuna dumped in for flavor, texture and nutrition. Place a bed of rice on the plate and ladle on the gravy. Right now it's probably not the best thing for your waist. If times get harder, we may all be eating a lot less and have lost a bit of weight, in which case, we'll be looking for a few extra calories.

So let's look at gravy a bit more. There are infinite varieties of gravy. I could do the whole Forest Gump name all the forms of gravy but I'll refrain. I'm fond of white gravy myself. Just look around the pantry and you'll find all sorts of things to either toss in the gravy or to toss the gravy over. If you have a large freezer for food storage, look around for a restaurant supply store. Here on the West Coast of America we have a chain called Cash and Carry. They are open to the public. You'll find there are big bags of crumbled sausage, Canadian bacon, link sausage, all in large packages that cost less per ounce than the small individual packaging you find at the local grocery store. Just look around and imagine things swimming in a creamy white sauce. As long as the electricity holds out to power the freezer, you can have a ready supply of tasty protein to toss into your gravies.

So you've got a tasty gravy, now what? Put something under it and chow down. Got bread? Got bread that doesn't taste quite as fresh as you'd like? Toast it and top it with your gravy. Getting sick of that white rice? Add the tuna or sausage gravy with some salt and pepper. If you're lucky enough to have some hamburger, steak or chicken, bread it and fry it in chicken fried steak fashion and top with plain white gravy. A bit of corn or green beans on the side and you've got a meal.

For those of you who have only made gravy by opening a jar, or mixing water with the ingredients of a package, here are a few tips. I have to admit. I most often end up with lumpy gravy or scorched gravy and various other incarnations of gravy. It comes from doing too many things at once. It doesn't bother me. I like my gravy, lumpy, scorched or otherwise.

Basic Gravy Recipe

4 tablespoons margarine or butter
4 tablespoons flour
2 cups water, white wine, chicken stock or milk

Melt the butter over low heat, then add the liquid and the flour, stir for 3-4 minutes with a fork or wire whisk. Now that you have a basic sauce or gravy, you can start flavoring it. A pinch of salt, a can of tuna, a handful of sausage or a heavy grinding of black pepper are good starting points. Keep stirring until the gravy reaches the desired thickness.

Next up on the menu....cornbread!