More on Grain - Specifically Wheat

Wheat

Wheat is categorized into several different types. Hard red or white varieties are best for bread making, with hard white producing a lighter colored loaf. Soft red or white wheat is better for making crackers or pastries.

When hard wheat is stored as a whole grain, it has a shelf life of 30 plus years! Once it is ground into flour, however, it quickly breaks down and becomes rancid. It is ideal to grind wheat just before making bread to retain the highest nutritional value. Leftover flour should be stored in the refrigerator or freezer.

Bulgur is the term used for wheat kernels that have been softened by soaking or steaming. Cracked wheat is wheat that has been ground into a coarser product.

Whole Wheat Applesauce Cake

2 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. sugar
1 c. applesauce
1/2 c. oil
4 tsp cocoa
2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add applesauce and oil and beat well. Pour into ungreased angel food cake pan or 9x13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Whole Wheat Snickerdoodles

1 c. shortening
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon

Cream together 1 1/2 cups sugar and shortening. Add eggs and beat well. Combine flour, cream of tartar, salt and soda. Add to creamed mixture and mix well. Roll into 1 inch balls. Combine 2 T. sugar and cinnamon, roll dough balls in the cinnamon and sugar. Place on ungreased cookie sheet about 3 inches apart. Flatten slightly. Bake at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cool on racks. Makes about 3 dozen.

I hope you enjoy the recipes!

~Karin

Grains

Last week I mentioned what to store for minimum one year supply. When it came to grains the total for one year for one average adult was 300 pounds. 300 pounds of wheat!! Eee gads. What do you do with all that wheat! Well, that a whole different blog. Let's first discuss grains. OK, let's clarify, some are grains, some are seeds - deal with it!

There are:
Wheat: Hard White and Hard Red, and Soft Wheat

Rice: Brown and White
Oats: Rolled, Quick, Baby, Steam Table, Groats, Steel Cut
Barley: Hulled, Pearled
Corn: White, Yellow, Meal, Popcorn, Grits
Rye
Millet

Buckwheat
Amaranth
Quinoa (Keen-wa)
Spelt
Kamut (Ka-moo)
Flax:Golden and Brown

Who would of thought there so many options. I sure didn't. When I started working at Honeyville Grain, it was a huge eye-opener. I had no idea.

Of course, some of these grains are better for storage than others. Brown rice does not store well, but white rice does. The oat groats store better because of they are the whole grain and not processed.

Wheat stores the best. It can be store over 30 years in the proper containers. There are so many cooking  options and it is high in nutritional value. Need more vitamins? Then sprout it. I've got some sprouting as I type. (Practicing - I'm teaching a class on June 7th.)

Each grain has value in its own right. When I make bread I ALWAYS add approximately 1/2 cup or more of a grain.

Try this recipe - I've listed one of my favorite bread recipes in a previous post.

Granola

6 cups rolled oats
1/3 c. sesame seeds
1 c. coconut (you can leave this out, it'll ruin it for a lot of people)
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. sunflower seeds
Dried fruit and nuts are optional. (I always use dried cranberries and sometimes add blueberries, and almonds)

Mix all ingredients together except for dried fruit. In a separate bowl, whisk together:
1/2 c. oil (you can us coconut oil, it stores indefinitely and has a wonderful flavor without the coconut feathers)
1/3 c. honey
2 tsp. vanilla

Pour over dry mixture. Stir and coat thoroughly. Spread on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. About every 5 minutes, gently lift the outside edge with a pancake turner and fold it into the middle, then smooth the granola out evenly in the pan. Watch this process carefully. The cereal should be golden brown. Do no over bake. Add dried fruit. Let cool on baking sheet. When cool, store in airtight container. Makes about 8 cups.

Let me how you like it. ~Karin

Stone Tool Making

by Eric Heline

Here's a refresher for stone knappers and those of you who would like to get away from blown glass and begin to make some real works of art with flint, obsidian or other natural materials.
To begin with, determine a workable material by looking for conchoidal fracturing. This means the material will fracture in an arc, forming a dished (or domed) surface. Stones which fracture in straight line, or angular planes, do not work as well and should be avoided to start with.
One of the best overall liths to work with is obsidian, in terms of ease of flaking, sharpness (the sharpest), and great beauty. Obsidian comes in a wide variety of colors: black is the commonest, sometimes translucent, ("Apache tears" are obsidian-pebbles, polished by sand, wind and water). Red and black, or "mahogany", is also fairly common.
Other varieties include grey (usually opaque) which tends to a bit harder to work with. Snowflake, which is black with white "snowflake" inclusions, tends to present problems with getting a proper edge, as the more crystalline nature of the inclusions, they will flake or fracture differently (almost crumble) from the surrounding black matrix of the obsidian proper.
Most varieties of obsidian can be purchased from rock shops in large enough pieces or cores to get good blanks from. Since they are sold as lapidary material, they are generally "sound" rocks.
Another excellent material is jasper which come sin a wide variety of colors, combinations of colors, and hardnesses. It also has a glassy look, like obsidian, but is not translucent. Don't confuse picture jasper with picture stone. Picture stone is actually a sandstone, and will not have a glassy, polished look to it when in an unworked, rough state.
Flint and chert, of course are the two most widely used materials of the native Americans. They are basically of the same mineral composition, being mostly fine grained quartz, the microscopic quartz crystals cemented together by a matrix of "impurities". There are many varieties and colors of both, flint being primarily black, translucent sometimes, or grey. Chert is used to describe tan or white material. Chert will also have brown, yellow, red, or blue colors too, the colors derived from other minerals within the matrix.
Flint and chert are very hard sedimentary rocks, and often need to be heat treated before they can be worked. Heat treating is a rather involved process, though simple enough to do. A good book which covers all the elements of flint and chert and the heat treating of them is The Art of Flint Knapping, by D. C. Waldorf.

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Making the Tools
Step 1 - Direct Percussion

Step one is to get blanks off from the core.The first method is by direct percussion: striking the edge of the core with a hammerstone (granite makes a good hammerstone) or a baton of deer antler. Remember! A glancing blow to the edge. A direct blow will simply shatter the core. With glassy-type rocks (obsidians) a very indirect glancing blow is used. With the harder materials (jaspers, cherts and flints), a more direct, though still glancing blow is needed.
Step 2 -- Indirect percussionIndirect percussion, using an antler punch, now removes any unwanted knobs or high spots on the blanks. An anvil or work surface is needed -- either a flat piece of hardwood or a large rock. The blank is placed on the anvil and held down with one hand, leaving the thumb and forefinger to hold the punch to the area to be removed, and striking the end of the punch with the hammerstone.
Step 3 -- Percussion FlakingPercussion flaking is now employed to thin the blank down. Holding the blank on the anvil, the antler punch is placed on the edge of the blank or along one side of any "squared" edge, then striking the punch with the hammerstone, peeling large flakes off across the face of the blank.
Step 4 -- CrumblingCrumbling now achieves the basic shape of the tool to be fashioned. Placing the blank on the anvil, or now in the hand mitt, flat sides down, with a large pointed antler tine held at a 90-degree angle to the edge desired, press down with a rolling twist and crumble the edge away, working along the edge to get the basic shape.
Step 5 -- AbradingAbrade (or grind) the edge (held at a 900 angle) upon a piece of hard sandstone or other rock to get an even working surface, smoothing out the tough spots from the crumbling process.
Step 6 -- Pressure FlakingNext, pressure flaking begins the actual process of producing an edge on the shaped blank. Holding the lank in the handmitt, and starting out with a large flaker of antler tine, press directly into the edge, and with a rolling, downward motion peel flakes off across the face of the blank. The more pressure exerted into the edge, the larger the flakes which will come off. Remember, by placing the flaker on the edge, and rolling down, the flakes will come off the underside of the blank as its held in the handmitt. Work all along the edges and from both faces of the blank. Repeat the process with smaller flakers as necessary depending on the size of the tool being made.
Step 7 -- KnappingThe actual technique of knapping takes very small flakes off along the edge, and produces the final razor sharpness. Using very pointed, sometimes almost needlelike flakers of antler, remove the flakes with the same inward pressure, and rolling downward twist as is used in pressure flaking.
Step 8 -- NibblingNibblers are antler tines with a notch ground into the end, and are used to crumble the notches into the bottom corners of the point, the notches, of course, used to lash the point to the arrow shaft. Pressure flaking also works to flake the notches.

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Tools of the Trade

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From The Tracker magazine, Summer 1982, published by the Tracker School.
For more articles from The Tracker magazine, visit the Tracker Trail website.

How to tell if the Moon is Waxing or Waning

Moon Phases - T. L. Willis
If you want to determine if the moon is Waxing (getting bigger) or Waning (getting smaller) all you have to do is look when you can see it. If it is visible in the evening sky the Moon is Waxing (getting bigger). If the moon is visible at dawn or in the early morning, it is Waning. Here is a rhyme to help you remember it:
If you see the Moon at the end of the day
A bright Full Moon is on its way
If you see the Moon in the early dawn
Look real quick, it will soon be gone.
Another way to identify a Waxing or Waning Moon is to look at which side is "incomplete". When the Moon is illuminated in such a way that the side facing West is "incomplete" the Moon is Waning (getting smaller). It the side to the East is "incomplete" the Moon is Waxing (getting bigger)

Food Storage - Bare Minimum Basics

Basic storage is the foundation of any good food storage program. it is composed of life-sustaining foods that store well for long periods of time. A year's supply of garden seeds for planting should be stored so that the diet may be supplemented with fresh vegetables. When garden space is limited, a multiple vitamin pill sold also be stored for daily use by each person during a long period of emergency. Vitamins deteriorate over time and must be replaced by the expiration date on the container.

The following recommendations are estimated for an average adult. The amounts in the left-hand column supply about 2300 calories per day for 1 year. The amounts in the right hand column supply about 2400 calories a day for a 1 year.

300 pounds	Grains	400 pounds
60 pounds	Legumes	60 pounds
20 pounds	Fats and Oils	10 quarts

60 pounds	Sugars	59 pounds
75 pounds	Powder Milk*	16 pounds
5 pounds	Salt	8 pounds

*16 pounds of milk supplies only 1 cup of milk per day and is not enough for growing children or pregnant/nursing mothers.

Garden Seeds - Hallelujah for non-hybrid seeds! Honeyville Farms (where I work) has carried the non-hybrid garden seeds, culinary herb, and fruits. But now we also have Ancient Grains, Salsa, and Medicinal Herbs. These seeds store for 4-5 years and even longer in colder temperatures.