Sunday, August 22, 2010

Honey, I don't think this is a bike blog



Ok, what's a picture of Boiling water doing in a bike blog? and yes, I need to clean my stove better.
Well, doing research and writing my novel, I found out about some traditional foods in early America. One of the food that people I am currently writing about, The Shawnee, passed on to us is Johnnycakes -which most people think is a mangling of "Shawnee Cakes". So I decided to little experiential research and cook up a batch.
The first item was cornmeal. No big deal. I headed over to Fresh and Easy. They had cornmeal in a 5 pound bag, which for me would be lifetime supply.
I managed to find a one pound can of Quaker at Wal-mart, so it was on again. The next question was what recipe to follow. A lot of them seem to be awfully modern ("mix water, cornmeal, and High Fructose Corn Syrup").In the end, I picked this recipe from whatscookingamerica.net. While I did question the milk (Cows were viewed as "big Knife", or Colonial animals) , I liked the touch of Bacon Drippings. No , Neither Fresh and Easy or Wal-mart had a can of Bacon Drippings. I guess I could have fried up a slab ("bacon Drippings" is the grease left over after frying) Since I would be using my trusty Whirlpool fire,. I Figured I could use PAM.
I combined the ingredients as specified, and then had a problem. The recipe called for the mixture to be fairly thick, but I had something the consistency of soup. I stirred in enough cornmeal to make it thick enough (I used yellow instead of white cornmeal, That must be it. right!) and then fried the results:

I garnished it with Low - Calorie Imitation Maple Syrup (plenty of HFCS there) and real butter.
The result: I haven't died. yet. It may be a little bland compared to our modern foods, and that my be part of our dietary problems, but still it was a good time for a good cause.
and just in case you need a bicycling fix:


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