The Goods Are Odd

I don’t want corn fed to the cows I eat or get milk from. I also don’t want corn as fuel. I don’t want corn sweetened food or drink. I would also prefer less corn in the Farm Bill. But these limits still leave many positive, healthy, and delicious options for our powerful giant mutant grain.

I seriously love to snack. Snacks that crunch are the most satisfying- and though I should, I don’t really opt for crunchy snacks straight from the ground. Thus the snack is usually what tempts me into the middle of the store where (as M. Pollan observed) the food is less food like and always lives in boxes and bags. Two counts against The Snack from my tally of what I feel I should buy and eat. Enter popcorn, popped on the stove! No clunky appliance that only does one thing (boo), nor “popcorn lung“, nor any magnetron radiation (what?!)

Heavy tallish pot with a lid, Canola Oil to pop, sprinkled with tamari, nutritional yeast, and salt. Done! Yum!

When I first started popping corn on the stove I measured the oil, put in a few kernels to test when the oil was hot then poured in a measured amount of corn. Now I just put it all in a once without measuring. I just leave it until it’s done, sometimes a shake or two if I’m feeling ansy.

Pretty much all foods are better homemade than from a package. There are some foods however whose packaged versions are almost unrecognizable to the home-cooked version. This is true for the tortilla. In this case, the corn tortilla.

Using just masa harina (versus fresh masa) and water makes a very forgiving dough that can be pressed and cooked in a few minutes.

I haven’t yet acquired a tortilla press, and honestly wouldn’t have room for one, so I just used parchment paper and a small cast iron skillet. This makes a thicker tortilla, but I enjoy their toothy-ness and it’s honestly easier to pile on toppings.

The only thing to keep in mind with the dough is to keep it covered with a damp cloth while working since you don’t want it drying out.

I grew up eating a lot of corn bread.* My mom has always made a hearty version in a ceramic baking pan. In my simple kitchen I use the cast iron skillet for as many things as possible, which works well for this, since corn bread seems to love a hot skillet in which to bake.

Corn bread is still something I am trying to get right. I’ve made corn bread a number of times and with butter and honey (or also molasses and peanut butter as some enjoy) it’s great, but on it’s own it is pretty dry. I used Alice Waters’ recipe for this one and added flax meal. Next I will try using sourdough starter and see if that improves things. I don’t think I want it cakier, but I know it would be better with more moisture.

*(Post Mother’s Day update: apparently we ate a lot of cornbread because we ate a lot of beans. My parents are vegetarians and my mother did her homework on how to feed a family without meat. This is done most successfully by understanding the concept of amino acids and the combination of low-quality or less complete proteins to create high quality, full, or complete proteins. Eating corn with beans was one way to do this. See this page, from Dimensions of Food, for the lowdown and note that two of the references for this page are the books my mom used to create her complete proteins meals, Diet for a Small Planet and Laurel’s Kitchen)