James Perry

The corn used is called field corn, or dent corn, where I am. It's not the sweet kind and the ears tend to be larger. It's usually used in its dry form rather than cooked and eaten while green.

As far as finding husks the right size I do know that you don't have to just use one corn husk per tamale. It's mess till you get the hang of it but you can use two husks if needed. And yup, banana leaves are a common wrapper in many places and I've even seen tamales wrapped in cooking paper if that's all there was.

Hope this helps,
James

As far as wood burning stoves go no, you do not have the ability to control the heat like you do on a "modern" stove. The thing is, the whole cooking surface is not the same temperature. Simply put, more heat closer to the firebox and cooler areas away from it. Only way to cook on one is, in my opinion, by experience and just learning where to move the pan to get the type of heat you need at the time. Think less about cooking on a stove with actual burners and more like cooking over live flame.

And in my opinion it's very usable once you earn to dance so to speak and the one good thing is that you're not limited to a certain number of pots like you would be with say 6 burners. They can give you a lot of usable space because the whole cooking surface is the burner.

I don't know enough about the wood gas idea for any input there.

Hope this helps,
James

Hi y'all, the name's James and now live around Kansas City Ks. Grew up in and spent a lot of my life in SE New Mexico/West Texas. Not sure what else to say at the moment but this, older I get, more I think of finding a spot of land and ignoring the insanity that is "modern life."

Just seems that living paycheck to paycheck and having nothing tangible to show for it is well, insane. Never had the chance to even do much gardening but never to late to learn. And am an accomplished cook, have worked with wood, even know a little about adobe. Am an artist as well and also trying to get legal where I live to get back into massage to improve myself and earn enough money to afford to at least dream about having a patch of land that's mine...

Have a nice night,
James