HOW TO DRY CORN

The pioneer farmers in America and many of their descendants up to the present time dry their Indian corn by the methods the early mountain men learned from the Indians. The corn drying season naturally begins with the harvesting of the corn, and it often continues until the first snow falls.

Selecting a number of ears of corn, the husks are pulled back exposing the grain, and then the husks of the several ears are braided together. These bunches of corn are hung over branches of trees or horizontal poles and left for the winds to dry.

Because of the danger from corn-eating birds and beasts, these drying poles are usually placed near the kitchen door of the cabin or sometimes in the attic.

SWEET CORN

There is a way to preserve corn which a few people still practice just as they learned from the Indians. First they dig long, shallow trenches in the ground, fill them with dried roots and small twigs, with which they make a hot fire and thus cover the bottom of the ditch with glowing embers. The outer husks of the fresh green corn are then removed and the corn is placed in rows side by side on the hot embers. As the husks become scorched the ears are turned over, and when browned on all sides they are deftly tossed out of the ditch by means of a wand or stick used for that purpose.

The burnt husks are now removed and the grains of corn are shelled from the cob with the help of a sharp-edged, fresh water clam shell.

The corn is then spread out on a cloth and allowed to dry in the sun. It is “mighty” good food, as any Southern born person will tell you. One can keep a supply of it all winter.

PARCHED FIELD CORN

Parch the field corn in a frying pan and then butter and salt it while it is still hot. You may parch field corn or sugar corn and crush or grind it after it has been parched. The knowledge of how to make the various kinds of corn bread and the use of corn generally from “roasting-ears” to corn puddings was learned from the American Indians.

ASH CAKES

Mix half a teaspoonful of salt with a cup of corn meal and add to it boiling hot water until the swollen meal may be worked by one’s hand into a ball. Bury the ball in a nice bed of hot ashes (glowing embers) and leave it there to bake like a potato.

PONE

Pone is made by mixing the meal as described for the ashcake, but molding the mixture in the form of a cone and baking it in an oven.

PULLED FIREBREAD OR TWIST

The twist is made of dough and rolled between the palms of the hands until it becomes a long thick rope, then it is wrapped spirally around a dry stick or one with bark on it. The coils should be close together but without touching each other. The stick is now rested in the forks of two uprights, or on two stones in front of the roasting fire, or over the hot coals of a pit-fire. The long end of the stick on which the twist is coiled is used for a handle to turn the twist so that it may be nicely browned on all sides.

JOHNNY-CAKE

A Johnny-cake is mixed in the same way as the pone or ash cake, but it is not cooked the same, nor is it the same shape; it is more in the form of a very thick pancake. Pat the Johnny-cake into the form of a disc an inch thick and four inches in diameter. Have the frying pan plentifully supplied with hot grease and drop the Johnny-cake carefully into the sizzling grease. When the cake is well browned on one side, turn it and brown the other side. If cooked properly it should be a rich dark brown color and with a crisp crust. Before it is eaten it may be cut open and buttered like a biscuit, or eaten with maple syrup like a hot buckwheat cake.

FLAPJACKS

Put a large tin cupful of flour in a pan, add half a teaspoonful of salt, one heaping teaspoonful and one level teaspoonful of baking powder; mix the salt and baking powder well with the flour while it is dry. Then build your little mountain or volcano of flour with its miniature crater in the middle, into which pour water little by little; making the lava by mixing the dough as you go. Continue this process until all the flour is a fine batter; the batter should be thin enough to spread out rapidly into the form of a pancake when it is poured into the skillet or frying pan, but not watery.

Grease the frying pan with a greasy rag fastened to the end of a stick or with a piece of bacon rind. Remember that the frying pan only needs enough grease to prevent the cake from sticking to the pan; when one fries potatoes the pan should be plentifully supplied with very hot grease, but flapjacks are not potatoes and too much grease makes the cakes unfit to eat.

CAMP CORN BREAD AND CORN DODGERS

In the North they also call this camp corn bread “Johnny-cake,” but whatever it is called, it is wholesome and nourishing. Take some corn meal and wheat flour and mix them fifty-fifty; add a teaspoon level full and a teaspoon heaping full of baking powder and about half a teaspoonful of salt; mix these all together, while dry, in your pan, then add water gradually. If you have any milk, go fifty-fifty with the water and milk, make the flour as thin as batter, pour it into a reflector pan or frying pan, prop it up in front of a quick fire; it will be heavy if allowed to cook slowly at the start, but after your cake has risen, you may take more time with the cooking. This is a fine corn bread to stick to the ribs. When made in form of biscuits, it is called “corn dodgers.”

CAMP BISCUIT

Take two cups full of flour and one level teaspoonful and one heaping teaspoonful of baking powder and half a teaspoonful of salt and mix them together thoroughly while dry. To this you add milk and water—if you have no milk use straight water—mixing it as described for the flapjacks. Make the dough soft but stiff enough to mold with well floured hands, form it into biscuits about half an inch thick, put them into a greased pan, and bake them in any one of the ovens already described or by propping them up in front of the fire.

BOILED POTATOES

Almost anyone can cook potatoes, but few cook them well. Most people think the best way is to boil them in their jackets and to cook them perfectly in this manner is so simple and easy that the wonder is how anyone can fail. A kettle of screeching hot water with a small handful of salt in it, good potatoes of nearly equal size, washed clean and clipped at the ends, are requisites for this dish. Put the potatoes in the boiling water, cover tightly, and keep the water at high boiling pitch until you can thrust a sharp sliver through the largest potato. Then drain off the water and set the kettle in a hot place with the lid partly off. Take them out only as they are wanted—lukewarm potatoes are not good. They will be found about as good as potatoes can be, when cooked in their jackets. But there is a better way: select enough for a mess, of smooth, sound tubers; pare them carefully, taking off as little as possible, because the best of the potato lies nearest the skin, and cook as above. When done, pour the water off to the last drop; sprinkle a spoonful of salt and fine cracker crumbs over them; then shake, roll, and rattle them in the kettle until the outsides are white and floury. Keep them piping hot until wanted. This is the way to have perfectly boiled potatoes.

ROAST POTATOES

Many outdoor folk are fond of roast potatoes in camp; and they mostly spoil them in the roasting, although there is no better place than the campfire in which to do so. To cook them right, scoop out a basin-like depression in the fire, three or four inches deep, and large enough to hold the tubers when laid side by side; fill it with bright, hard-wood coals, and keep up a strong heat for half an hour or more. Next, clean out the hollow, place the potatoes in it, and cover them with hot sand or ashes, topped with a heap of glowing coals, and keep up all the heat you like. In about forty minutes, try them with a sharpened hardwood sliver; when this will pass through them they are done and should be raked out at once. Run the sliver through them from end to end to let the steam escape, and eat immediately, as a roast potato can quickly become soggy.