Have we gone lazy?

I was thinking about this the other day when I was making my own ice cream.  But, have we become so lazy of a society that we don't make anything ourselves anymore?  People know that bad things like artificial colors, artificial flavors and sugar substitutes can be found in all sorts of store bought items but is it really so difficult to make something at home?  People are willing to go and shell out $10 for a quart of freshly made ice cream but yet with about $5 of ingredients, you can make this all at home. 

I even thought about the work that goes into getting some fresh corn to eat.  I bought a selection of white and yellow corn for 50 cents each at Dierburgs.  I then shucked them, which means to remove the stalk and the silk, and then trimmed them and boiled them in water for 10 minutes.

 

After I cooked them, I let them cool off and then held them on their ends and trimmed the corn off of them.  The corn will get mixed up in some fake butter and salt and taste like sweet, sweet corn.

I also planned on making some chili and any chili you make your own, is better than canned.  So, the hardest part of chili is perhaps the soaking of the beans.  These beans soaked for almost 24 hours.

I took this, added some chopped up steak pieces that were marinating in some Budweiser, and then cooked it up with some garlic, onions, tomatoes and other goodies.

Also, I know that most people can't do this, but a good ice cream machine is totally worth it.

which is the true America's favorite corn bread?

A few weeks ago I wanted to pose a true test: which of the following is America's best corn bread.  (Or at least, which is the tastiest).

All three of these boxes were about the same price, give or take a few pennies.  All of them were already simple to the point where you just add water or milk and maybe an egg and mix and cook.  How simple could this be?  Well, it was a good test.

First off, let's give a big round of applause to the Native Americans for coming up with cornbread.  I love it when it is cooked properly and tastes great.

Now, the first one I tried was:

The Flavorite brand was basically made to make the cheapest products using the cheapest ingredients at the most generic level.  Their cornbread, when mixed and placed within a pan and cooked, as instructed, came out so dry that I could only eat mine with some fresh jam I had made.

Flavorite gets a 2 out of 5 on their box cornbread.

I then went with this next one:

I think it said that the Martha White brand had this recipe from the early 1800's and passed it down to you and you know what?  It doesn't taste good at all.  There was almost no corn flavor in this.  It was as if they made the most bland tasting corn meal from mixing it with flour and making something dry and crumbly with no flavor.  Again, a 2 out of 5 stars for Martha White.

Last, I picked this one: America's favorite brand

America's favorite was perhaps the best of all three of these boxed concoctions.  Was it dry? Yes.  Was it so dry and crumbly that it was hard to eat in your hand? Yes.  Was it tasty?  Well......let's say that it tasted the most like real corn than any of the three.  So, between then three of them, it was the best.  A 3 out of 5 for me.

Now, for future reference, if you were doing any dish, like stuffing or a framers cookout and you needed a quick cornbread to be used as a component for other things, not to star as its own, but for other things, then use Jiffy.  I make better cornbread from my own recipe but for the 5 minutes it takes to mix it and the time it takes to cook it, it was a nice treat.

What do you have cooking in your log cabin?

I admit, I am not so much a history buff than a history reader.  I do enjoy reading history and learning about things of the past.  I even enjoy reading about what ancient peoples ate and how they prepared their food.  Corresponding with that notion is an interesting book called Log Cabin Cooking, from Barbara Swell.

My mother took a trip to Springfield, Illinois, where thanks to our 16th President and his modest life, the idea of living in a log cabin has been pushed to the brink of Romanticism and given a feeling of adventure, when for those who were actually dealing with the life, it was nothing fun at all. My mother picked up this cookbook, which tells a little about how people in the 1830's cooked and did their basic food stuffs, without the use of fancy gadgets, like: thermometers, microwaves or refrigerators.

While some of the ideas and generally accepted principles were good enough to get food on the table, in most cases, it wasn't goo enough to make things tasty.  Even so, many of the frontier people survived because they did a few things that would help them.  How they survived with little to no fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products is beyond me as I can't make it through the day without a big glass of chocolate milk.

Out of necessity came simple recipes that needed little wet ingredients: baked items, like breads and muffins.  Out of this book, I tried my hands at the cornbread, which likely came from a 1835 recipe.  Unlike the original peoples, I had an easy time at this, as my oven has a thermometer built into it so I set the temperature I wish and simply wait.  The book suggests that you get your wood oven hot and then place your hand inside of it so you can check the temperature.  Like a grill, the temperature is based upon how long you can have your hand near the fire without having it burn off.  Using their simple recipe, of mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ones and combine them together, I was able to pour the batter into my Pyrex cooking pan, instead of my cast iron pan.

Now, again, I had it easy as I was able to play some video games while this was cooking, compared to those living in the wilderness, but in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes, a nice tasting, but a tad dry cornbread came out of the oven.

Now since I have never seen anyone server cornbread dry, I know that it is okay.  You always serve cornbread with a soup, because its dryness sucks up the broth.  You also almost always slather a thick coating of butter on it and either fix certainly made this a very tasty cornbread.  So, give one point to the housewives in the 1830's.

Along with this, you have to wonder how they did their everyday work and still make food for the table.  There was a lot of breads or muffins, a lot of soups and stews and a low of preserved things.  House chores would be so much more difficult as you would have to go outside to wash the clothes and the dishes. However, overall, some of the great things we have today as American dishes, came from things that were prepared during this time period or the time in the West.