CORN AND BEANS, THE WONDER FOODS

by Kurt Saxon

(From THE
SURVIVOR; Volume 8)

Corn and beans have been staple
foods for thousands of years. Those American Indians who farmed grew corn, beans
and squash as the main elements of their diets. All three are easy to grow, are
very productive, filling and nutritious. In fact. one could live on these three
foods, and many have had to.

While researching this article I
talked to many Southerners who remembered corn and beans as their mainstays as
children during the Great Depression. Cornbread and cornmeal mush and beans were
always there, regardless of their poverty, and they thrived!

If you have a supply of corn and
beans you’ll never hunger. Moreover, they taste good. They can also be mixed
with any other food, adding bulk and flavor to the most humble meal.

To utilize corn you must buy it
in 50 pound sacks for about $3.50 from your local feed and seed store. You’ll
also need a Corona Grain Mill. I sell them as a convenience to my readers since
I make more profit selling only two books and books are so much easier to
package and mail. So this is no hard-sell. I’m doing you a favor because I want
you to own a mill. The mill will be among your most important survival tools.

When you get your corn, transfer
it to two liter pop bottles, plastic bags, gallon jars, etc., as weevils will
come from all over to eat it.

Don’t bother trying to sprout
the corn as it’s most likely hybrid and so only about one grain out of ten will
sprout and the rest will only rot.

GRINDING CORN 

With my Corona Grain Mill I can
grind a pound of whole corn in five minutes. I put the pound in the hopper and
set the screws to a very coarse grind which only cracks the kernels into five or
six pieces each. Then I adjust the screws a little tighter to grind the pieces
finer. Then again and again and once again. This makes grinding easy.

Since most recipes take a pound
or less, grinding by the pound insures freshness. Of course, you can grind
several pounds at a time but that’s work. If you set up your mill permanently in
a place of its own. you can grind routinely with no thought of time consumption
or hard work.

GRINDING SCREEN

A way I came up with to make the
grinding easier is a box screen. This is a four-sided, bottomless box of 1 by 4
inch wood. Mine is 12 by 12 inches. I used regular nylon window screen as that’s
as fine as any bread flour or corn-meal needs to be. I simply spread GOOP glue
generously on the rim and pressed the screen on.

I put a section of newspapers
under the grinder head and put the screen on the newspaper and under the grinder
head. After each grinding stage I shook the finer meal through the screen onto
the newspaper and then transferred it into a bowl. This saved sending the finer
meal back through the grinder.

You can also use
the screen for anything else, as the GOOP gives the screen a permanent and
strong bond to the wood.   CORNMEAL
MUSH

Your first project
should be cornmeal mush. Consider, as you read, how cheap and simple it is to
make. The best way to cook cornmeal mush is in a Crock-Pot.
They cost about $20.00 at Wal-Mart or most other stores. They last forever and
use only about 10 cents electricity in 24 hours. They cook slowly and will not
burn the contents. You can start a batch of whatever before leaving for work and
when you get home you’ll have a fully-cooked hot meal waiting. The instruction
booklet shows you how to do all your cooking in a Crock-Pot, cheaply and
great-tasting. Get one!   CROCK
POT

Without
a Crock-Pot you need a double boiler. Corn will stick hard over direct heat and
so you must not cook it over direct heat.

A double boiler is simply two
pots, the bottom one filled with water and the top holding whatever you don’t
want direct heat applied to. You can get double boilers cheaply at Wal-Mart,
Sears, etc.. but a Crock-Pot is best.

But say you have a Crock-Pot.
Put in 5 and half cups of cold water and pour in and stir 2 cups of cornmeal and
a tablespoon of salt. You can add whatever spices or herbs you like for flavor
or leave it plain. Turn the Crock-Pot on high and put on the lid. Then let it
cook for 3 hours.

After one hour stir it well with
a table knife and scrape off any cornmeal sticking to the sides, as that’s where
the heating elements usually are. Cornmeal does stick slightly in a Crock-Pot,
but it’s easily scraped off.

After the second hour give it
another stir and scrape and let it alone. After the third hour, scrape and stir
again and pour the mush out into a greased or Teflon-coated bread baking pan.

Let it alone for a few
hours or overnight. It will then be set firm and you can turn it out on a plate.
Then cut
off quarter-inch slices and fry it golden brown and serve it with whatever else
you have. It tastes good, is nutritious and filling.

Instead of plain cornmeal mush
you can make scrapple. That’s simply the mush with meat scraps chopped up and
mixed with the cornmeal during the cooking.

You can’t beat the
economy of cornmeal mush. At 7 cents a pound for cornmeal ground yourself, 2
cups or 10 ounces costs about 4 cents.. What you get when it sets is just over
3-1/2 pounds of food for about two cents a pound!   CORNBREAD 

Now for cornbread. This is
delicious and Southerners love it. It’s among the simplest breads to make. It’s
baked in a greased or teflon-coated pan about two inches deep and 8×10 Inches or
round in an iron skillet.

It’s cut into slabs and the
slabs are then cut in half and spread with margarine. Cornbread doesn’t hold
as firmly as wheat or rye breads so it needs half wheat flour for the gluten to
keep it from being too crumbly. Cornbread doesn’t lend itself to making
sandwiches but it’s bread all the same.

A favorite dish of mine since
childhood is chunks of hot cornbread covered with pinto beans and the bean soup.
Delicious!

To bake it you get together 2
cups of cornmeal, I cup of wheat flour, 2 tablespoons of bacon grease, cooking
oil, melted margarine, etc., 2 teaspoons of salt. I egg, 3 teaspoons of baking
powder and 1-1/2 cups of water.

To make a lighter loaf,
substitute commercial white flour and milk and add another egg. This may taste
better to some, but I like the cruder kind just fine.

Mix the flours and add the
grease or oil and mix some more. Then add the egg and salt and mix some more.
Now add the water and mix until smooth.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees
F. and add the baking powder and mix again. Then pour the batch into the baking
pan and put it in the oven. Bake It for 45 minutes.

When this is baked you’ll have 1
pound 7 ounces of extremely rich bread for a total cost of just under 20 cents.
It’s tasty, nutritious and very filling.

You can also make
corn pancakes with this recipe. Use 2 cups of water so they’ll spread, and fry
them in bacon grease, etc., in a hot skillet like regular pancakes. When the
bubbles in the middle of the cakes stay open. it’s time to turn them. A couple
of minutes later they’re done. These are heavier than flour pancakes. Spread
them with margarine while hot and they taste great with salt and pepper or even
syrup if you’re into sweets.   These
are the corn dodgers Rooster Cogburn carried with him as his mainstay while
tracking Ruffians.

  PINTO BEANS

A pound of dried pinto beans
turns into 3 pounds of cooked beans. At 40 cents a pound, dried, that’s a little
over 13 cents for a pound of cooked beans.

Pinto beans are best cooked in a
Crock-Pot as they take quite a while and no one cares with a Crock-Pot, but in a
kettle they might be forgotten and burn.

Nothing is simpler to cook than
beans. If you only want beans but little or no soup, put in 6 cups of water and
2 cups of beans, plus a couple teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, chili
powder or whatever seasoning suits you. Cook on high for three hours and if they
mash easily they’re done.

Otherwise cook for another hour.
Since a Crock-Pot doesn’t quite boil, you can’t overcook them, so an hour or
more doesn’t matter. If you want bean soup, use 8 cups of water. I’d like you to
make and try everything in this article. You’ll find it’s ever so easy and
you’ll be surprised at how much good-tasting, nutritious and filling food you
can have for so little cost.

You’ll not only learn how to
cook but you’ll realize that you and yours will never go hungry, as will so many
who relate to food only as it is processed and prepared by others. You’ll then
wonder why anyone would be so stupid as to buy commercial “survival
food” for $ thousands when you can do better for $ hundreds and learn while
doing it.

I lose patience with people who
see such food as dull and unappetizing. Especially women. You go to a Mexican
restaurant, or Chinese, or Italian, pay an arm and a leg for admittedly
delicious meals. Yet you fail to see that they are all prepared with simple,
inexpensive ingredients, most of which are described
in Survivor Vol. 1 or just about any good all-purpose cookbook.

Any woman who considers herself
a good cook is fully capable of making any simple food taste good. If she can’t,
she’d better learn.

People who are so
dependent-minded that they must pay others to prepare their food are in danger
of losing everything. Don’t you realize that that attitude causes the average
family to spend about 30% of Its income on food when they could eat better on
about 5%?

Your family could
eat better and put that 25% savings to building a family business which would
make you valuable to your community. You could even afford a greenhouse
alongside your home. Succeeding issues will teach you to grow lots of food in a
small space and make more from a few hundred square feet of land than you can at
most jobs. Also, it will insure your safety, as your neighbors will fight to
protect their food supply, which could be you.