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Post by brokennock on Dec 8, 2021 16:51:26 GMT -7
From Spence's quote, "The pith of the matured stalk of the corn is esculent and nutritious."
Anyone here tried the pith as a food source?
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Post by Black Hand on Dec 8, 2021 19:14:18 GMT -7
First I'm hearing of this use.
The best camp breakfast - cornmeal mush flavored with dried vegetables (onion, green onion, carrots & tomato paste), bouillon and sausage and/or bacon (with all the grease). Plenty of black and crushed red pepper to taste.
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Post by spence on Dec 9, 2021 9:00:28 GMT -7
From Spence's quote, "The pith of the matured stalk of the corn is esculent and nutritious." Anyone here tried the pith as a food source? I haven't, but there is a lot of evidence the Native Americans did. The early Jamestown settlers did, too. Also, somewhere as yet located in my files is an account of a commercial process for using the sweet juice from corn stalks to make syrup/molasses. From Maryellen Spencer's PhD dissertation, 1982, Food in Seventeenth-Century Tidewater Virginia, some quotations from people at the time about the corn stalk juice: "The fresh young corn yielded both roasting ears and a sweet juice "somewhat like a suger Cane" which the Indians sucked from the stalks." "I cannot let slip a great secret, (saith the Author) whereof I will avouch no more, then with my hands and eyes I have handled and seene, and whereof to my great comfort, I have often tasted: The wheate beeing sowen thicke, some stalkes beare eares of corne, and some (like silences in trees) beare none: but in those barren stalkes, there is as much juice as in some sugar cane, of so delicate a tast, as no fruit in England, is comparable to it: out of which Sir Ralph Lane conceived, that wee may extract sugar, in great quantity. But Sir Thomas Gates affirmeth that our men doe make cordiall drinke thereof, to their great comfort.” "...the stalk being greene hath a sweet juyce in yt, somewhat Iike a sugar-cane, which is the cause that when they gather the corne greene, they suck the stalkes, for as we gather greene peas, so do they, their corne being greene, which excelleth their old." "The stalk bruised yields a juice as big as Rice, pleasant as Sugar, and the green Ears boyled in such juice is comparable in agreeablenesse to the palats to what ever our Pease, Sparagus, or Hartichoke, hath eyther for satisfaction or delicacy." And from the Virginia Gazette, February 1755: "The stalks, green as they were, as soon pulled up, were carried to a convenient trough, then chopped and pounded so much that by boiling all the juice could be extracted out of them; which juice every planter knows is of as saccharine a quality as almost anything can be, and that any thing of a luxuriant corn stalk is very full of it..., " Spence
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Post by brokennock on Dec 9, 2021 15:11:09 GMT -7
So the "evil" corn syrup is nothing new,,, lol. All this talk of sweet sugary juice from corn had me partaking of some fine and properly aged corn juice myself last night.
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Post by spence on Dec 9, 2021 18:07:26 GMT -7
Funny how that works, isn't it? Corn juice fermented and/or distilled is elixir of the gods, health potion par excellence, but plain corn juice boiled to syrup is a slow, deadly poison. brokennock, you asked if field corn could be eaten, and I said I had eaten it. One of the few pleasures we old men have is boring everyone else with tales of events long gone but not forgotten. Let me show you how it works... One of my friends when I was 12-14 years old was Jimmy King. He was one of the four boys I hunted with during that time. His father, Othar King, was a woodworker, had a private workshop behind his house where he made impressive furniture. He didn’t have a lot of fingers left. One of my first jobs, maybe the first, was when Mr King hired me to rub out the lacquer finishes on that furniture using rottenstone or pumice and oil. Mr. King wasn’t a hunter, but he was involved in a hunting adventure I have fond memories of. He took me and Jimmy on a squirrel hunt. We went for two days, spent the night sleeping out, a real adventure for us boys. Mr. King drove an old, badly worn Model T Ford truck, and this was in about 1945-47. It would run almost forever on a tank of gas, but he had to carry a 5-gallon can of oil in the bed of the truck and stop every few miles to add some to the engine. I don’t remember about the hunting, don’t even know for sure what gun I was using at that time, but I remember the corn. We set up camp in a strip of pasture with the squirrel woods on one side and a large field of corn on the other. Field corn. It was in the late milk stage, still a bit soft. not quite ready for harvest. Mr. King told us to gather some, and showed us how to roast them over our campfire. We stuck them on sticks just like roasting wieners, rotated them to brown them golden brown all around. They would occasionally pop and spew as the milk boiled and ruptured the kernels. When they were browned we slathered on the butter, sprinkled them with salt and dug in. It was waxy delicious, stuck to your teeth and tasted absolutely marvelous. Sitting around the fire in the dark, roasting ears of corn and telling tales of squirrels killed and to be killed… what more could a kid want? I remember that as one of the best adventures of my young life, and had no doubt at the time it was one of the best things I ever ate. I still think I was right. Spence
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Post by brokennock on Dec 9, 2021 19:59:38 GMT -7
Funny how that works, isn't it? Corn juice fermented and/or distilled is elixir of the gods, health potion par excellence, but plain corn juice boiled to syrup is a slow, deadly poison. brokennock, you asked if field corn could be eaten, and I said I had eaten it. One of the few pleasures we old men have is boring everyone else with tales of events long gone but not forgotten. Let me show you how it works... One of my friends when I was 12-14 years old was Jimmy King. He was one of the four boys I hunted with during that time. His father, Othar King, was a woodworker, had a private workshop behind his house where he made impressive furniture. He didn’t have a lot of fingers left. One of my first jobs, maybe the first, was when Mr King hired me to rub out the lacquer finishes on that furniture using rottenstone or pumice and oil. Mr. King wasn’t a hunter, but he was involved in a hunting adventure I have fond memories of. He took me and Jimmy on a squirrel hunt. We went for two days, spent the night sleeping out, a real adventure for us boys. Mr. King drove an old, badly worn Model T Ford truck, and this was in about 1945-47. It would run almost forever on a tank of gas, but he had to carry a 5-gallon can of oil in the bed of the truck and stop every few miles to add some to the engine. I don’t remember about the hunting, don’t even know for sure what gun I was using at that time, but I remember the corn. We set up camp in a strip of pasture with the squirrel woods on one side and a large field of corn on the other. Field corn. It was in the late milk stage, still a bit soft. not quite ready for harvest. Mr. King told us to gather some, and showed us how to roast them over our campfire. We stuck them on sticks just like roasting wieners, rotated them to brown them golden brown all around. They would occasionally pop and spew as the milk boiled and ruptured the kernels. When they were browned we slathered on the butter, sprinkled them with salt and dug in. It was waxy delicious, stuck to your teeth and tasted absolutely marvelous. Sitting around the fire in the dark, roasting ears of corn and telling tales of squirrels killed and to be killed… what more could a kid want? I remember that as one of the best adventures of my young life, and had no doubt at the time it was one of the best things I ever ate. I still think I was right. Spence Wow. Thank you.
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Post by Black Hand on Dec 9, 2021 20:33:16 GMT -7
So the "evil" corn syrup is nothing new,,, lol. All this talk of sweet sugary juice from corn had me partaking of some fine and properly aged corn juice myself last night. I'm a fan of fermented corn squeezins but tend towards fermented cane squeezins...sugary sweet transformed into magic.
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Post by brokennock on Dec 10, 2021 6:00:17 GMT -7
So the "evil" corn syrup is nothing new,,, lol. All this talk of sweet sugary juice from corn had me partaking of some fine and properly aged corn juice myself last night. I'm a fan of fermented corn squeezins but tend towards fermented cane squeezins...sugary sweet transformed into magic. I like those too,,, tend to lean that way more in warmer weather.
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Post by Black Hand on Dec 10, 2021 15:24:02 GMT -7
It's always warm in Montana (even when it isn't).
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Post by spence on Dec 10, 2021 17:34:58 GMT -7
That reminds me of W. C. Fields:
"Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake."
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Keith
City-dweller
Bushfire close but safe now. Getting some good rain.
Posts: 990
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Post by Keith on Dec 11, 2021 17:39:24 GMT -7
That reminds me of W. C. Fields: "Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake." Thank you my friend, first smile I have had today Regards, Keith.
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Joe
City-dweller
Posts: 170
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Post by Joe on Dec 14, 2021 20:43:20 GMT -7
When I was a child my mother took me to the cornfield and we culled baby ears from suckers and boiled them. We ate cob and all, they were delicious.
Corn stalks were used as a substitute for molasses to make rum during the Revolutionary War.
"In 1777, the New Haven distillers Jacobs & Israel offered their services to local farmers endeavoring to convert the juice extracted from corn stalks into “rum.” The following year, an unnamed author explained in greater detail the method that Connecticut distillers were using to substitute corn stalk juice for molasses. Using a mill designed “after the model of the sugar-cane mills in the West Indies,” a dozen or more Connecticut alcohol producers harvested green corn stalks and squeezed the juice from them. Then they boiled the juice repeatedly until syrup as thick as molasses remained. By passing the fermented syrup through a still two or three times, one Middletown producer named Thomas Goodwin claimed to have “distilled 1435 gallons of good proof rum in 1777,” which could not be distinguished “either by the flavour or taste from new West India rum.”
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Post by spence on Dec 14, 2021 21:14:20 GMT -7
That's very interesting, Joe, one for my files. May I ask the source of your quotation, please?
Spence
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Post by brokennock on Dec 15, 2021 5:59:27 GMT -7
Interesting information Joe. I too would love the source. Especially as I have family in and from Middletown.
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Post by artificer on Dec 15, 2021 7:20:17 GMT -7
My Aunt married a Corn, Soy Bean and some livestock Farmer. She learned to tell exactly when Field Corn could be eaten and it was very good until it ripened too far. I think I remember her saying she could use field corn for two or maybe three weeks before it ripened too much. That field corn was raised to sell either as food for livestock or to the Grain Processing Plant that made huge quantities of alcohol and corn syrup.
The one problem with corn, though, is it REALLY depletes the soil of nutrients. That's why modern Corn Farmers rotate their fields, even though we have modern fertilizers. I remember reading on another forum how German/Dutch Farmers expected to take 11 years to get the best bounty of crops on new land in the 18th century and I think they also rotated corn?
Gus
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