k dayton

you want temp in root cellar around 35-40 degrees F (optimum) most are warmer.  my fave was an old one under a farmhouse I rented - the date scratched into the wall was 1896.  It had stone walls, axe marks on the ceiling joists, and a tamped earth floor.  The landlord along the way had used it for the water heater & well pump (when they put in the indoor plumbing) so it was too warm for traditional root cellaring, but excellent for long term pantry storage as it stayed 50 degrees year around (this was zone 4, winters -20 at times).  To compensate for the extreme humidity I coated (metal) canned goods with a very light coating of mineral oil (get at pharmacy at wal mart, it comes food grade).  Without oil they rusted in 3 yrs, with oil good for 6 yrs (maybe longer, I moved at the 6 year point).  Pails with mylar bags inside also did great.  Tho I could not store taters, apples, and other cold loving things in that cellar I loved having it available as an extra "pantry".  Unfortunately where I live now, (sone it's not cold enough for root cellar - however it is offest by being able to garden thru the winter. My garden IS my root cellar now, LOL.

I have used (and still do) the ultra cheapo version of a haybox - bring food to boil(often soaked beans) in my dutch oven with a tight lid.  Boil 10 min.  Wrap in an old quilt (from resale shop years ago) with polyester filling (does not absorb water & get funky) 3 to 4 inches thick.  Set on the washing machine.  Come back and dinner time and spoon cooked beans over rice, or mashed potatoes, or even toast.  Sprinkle with cheese & chow down.

I have even cooked soybeans (notoriously hard to cook soft) using this "wrap cooking" method.  It took two heat & wrap sessions to cook fully soft, but they cooked up the nicest I have ever been able to cook soybeans (fully dried, not edemame).  

I love this technique and the quilt or blanket wrap means I can do multiple pots.  I read somewhere that this was used by travelers in wagon trains, who soaked beans overnight, booiled them 10 min in the morning when making breakfast, then wrapped then, boxed them, and packed them in the wagon.  when they made camp for the night, the beans were done, needing only some quick cornbread or biscuits to make a meal.  Then put more beans to soaking while they slept.  Now how efficient is that?

basic foods, scratch recipes (as opposed to assembly directions, ie "buy a pre-roasted chicken, cut it up, place on whole wheat bread, etc...").  Cheap, genuine, comfort food, not mini-portions of artsy-fartsy stuff that requires ingredients you can only use in a few dishes (juniper berries, anyone?).  Foraged or homegrown food recipes are a plus, as are game, rough fish, ethnic frugality recipes, and home preserved foods.  The best cookbook I ever read was "Good Food for Hard Times" with its inexpensive, yet different ethnic takes on cheap eats. I also love WW 1 and WW2 rationing recipes - very creative.

buy tubers?  I see these growing wild all over both in Wisconsin and now down in GA, and when I ask permission to dig some I am generally told yes.  Most folks don't know they are edible.  I just cook them in the microwave like baked potatoes, then sit in front of the TV, bite off one end, squeeze the creamy inside into my mouth, then chew up the chewy (but not fibrous) skin and eat it too.  A little butter and salt and it's suppertime.  Gave some to one of my Md's and he sauteed the peeled roots in olive oil and said they were delicious (but I did warn him about the gas effect...)

Jay Angler wrote:I have a *really, really* old Presto 4 quart pressure cooker which I admit spends most of its life either making bone broth or cooking dried beans (I do the soak overnight pre-treatment method). 25 years ago, I happened to find a stainless straight sided basket with wire handles and small wire feet, that fits perfectly into the cooker. This is incredibly handy for both making broth and cooking beans. When the cooker's cool enough to open, I can just lift the basket out, leaving the liquid behind. In the winter, I always stick a matching pot lid on the cooker and allow the cooker to cool in the house. In the summer, it's easy enough to carry it outside to cool.

I LOVE my old 4 qt presto pressure cooker!  It was a wedding gift from my mom who knew how handy it would be for turning those cheap tough roasts and dry beans into delicious food without taking all day to do it.  I used it with a matching lid to pop popcorn (heavy pots are hard to find, LOL) the old fashioned way.  I still treasure that old pressure cooker, just the right size for two retirees now days.  My collection of recipes comes to almost 50 pages; and that isn't the whole batch of them.  Although I have a big canner for canning (the 4 qt one only does 3 pints at a time) the small one is my go-to for sterilizing tools, bandages, and the like when I re-stock the first aid kits.  Wrapped in brown paper they are not 100% sterile but certainly a whole lot less germy than just knocking around in a box!  

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:Seems like I've heard of ash being used as part of the process for making hominy?

Kathleen

Yes, hardwood ash can be used for making hominy because mixed with water it creates lye which is the hominy ingredient that processes the corn.  I have made it with lye, not ashes though, because I did not have access to hardwood ashes to try it.  Here are the directions I keep on hand in case I get my hands on some clean hardwood ashes.

Make your own lye water by dripping rain water (distilled for those with no rain catching system) through hardwood ashes. You might have trouble finding a barrel to make the drip system. Don’t worry, plastic pails that stack work just as well. (Better yet if you can get the baker at the local grocery store to give you a couple for free.) Proceed to make lye water in the usual manner and remember, if it not strong enough to suit you or to float the egg, you can simply run the weak lye water through another pail of fresh ashes to make it stronger, or boil it down to concentrate it.

To use the lye water to make hominy, put 2 gallons of lye water, 2 gallons of dry corn, and 2 additional gallons of plain potable water in a large non-reactive pot (that enamel canner works just fine!). Simmer until the corn kernel skins start to slip off. Drain, rinse and rub the corn through 4 cycles to get the lye out. Boil in the cleaned pot in water to cover until the skins finish coming off completely and the hominy rises top of the water. Scoop the hominy out and cook it as desired.

You can even skip the lye making step and make hominy with wood ash directly. Put two double handfuls of clean ashes (meaning you did not burn anything but just the wood) from oak, maple or poplar wood fires into 2 to 3 quarts of clean water. Boil for 1 hour, and then let it set all night for the ashes to settle. In the morning, boil dried corn in the water (strained if you like) until the skins come off and the corn color brightens, about 1-2 hours). Rinse and rub in 3 changes of water. Use the fresh hominy right away or preserve for later.

I like home made hominy much better than store stuff.  To preserve it, you can can it, freeze it, or dehydrate it.

I must admit your question made me chuckle since it echoed another complaint I recently ran across about lentils tasting like dirt.  Yes, that 'earthy" flavor is a little hard for some folks to get used to, especially if they are new to eating beets (or lentils!)  That is what lemon juice, vinegar, lemon pepper and other acidic ingredents are for.  They cut the 'dirt' flavor.  

As a child my family NEVER ate beets without a splash of vinegar, on both greens and roots.  My grandmothers pickled pickled beets were a childhood favorite.  Another other "acidic" addition to beets are mayonnaise or salad dressing on shredded or cubed beets for a cute pink salad.  Some old-timer dairy farmers (with access to oodles of dairy products) said that sour cream was terrific on beets - don't see why not.  Beets also marinate nicely in many salad dressings, both raw & shredded (a trifle messy) or cooked/canned.  

I read somewhere that cooking frees up the nutrients in beets by softening their texture, like carrots, for easier absorption,  Maybe.  I also read research from the 60s that the betain in beets can help lower cholesterol, which I happen to believe, since I lowered my cholesterol 30 points in two weeks by alternating a serving of of beets or cooked legumes for dinner, and had oatmeal (and cheerios with their oat bran) for breakfast. (My doctor was astounded.)

So jazz up those beets, you are not the first one to tell me they taste muddy.  Me, I like them any way, baked with butter comes to mind for dinner tonight, I have fresh ones waiting to be picked!

1- egg fried rice (if they like chinese food)
2- egg burritos or egg quesadillas (these are nice made ahead, then   frozen & microwaved at breakfast time)
3- bread pudding (yes, sweet, but one option, no worse than french toast)
4- home made egg mc muffins (egg, deli ham or sausage patty, a little   cheese)
5- A "walking breakfast" same as macmuffin only on toasted hamburger bun
6- As a teen I liked chili "pie" - ladle a scoop on hot chili in a small fritos bag after crunching down the fritos, top with a bit of shredded cheese (or sour cream if you are into it) and eat from bag using a plastic spoon.  You could do the same with doritos & taco flavored meat and beans, just for a change
7- Grilled cheese sandwich
8- Home made french toast sticks - make, freeze, put in toaster when  needed
9- GORP made with cheerios or other breakfast food of choice, dried fruit, and nuts of choice  I'd try to avoid the M&Ms but for die-hards, maybe just a few of the mini-size sprinkled in there
10- "Paleo" roll ups- deli turkey or rolled around a string cheese stick with a dip of mayo or salsa depending on taste.  Budding athletes seem to go for these.  
11- Deviled eggs? Pickled eggs?  Boiled eggs texture are made for eating on the move.  
12- On the off chance your kiddos do not find cottage cheese "yucky" you can mix it with water pack tuna for a tuna cheese salad; with art. sweetener & cinnamon for a (weight watchers) toast spread
13- Speaking of toast, how about the old Brit breakfast of baked beans over toast? Add shredded cheese (2 TB = 1/2 oz instead of 4 TB to save fat calories but looks & tastes equally decadent)

I hated eggs from childhood until my 20s when I discovered how to vary the flavor with omelets, so these are some of my non-traditional breakfasts over the years.  I wish oatmeal was not so dull; fortunately granola has many options.  Corn meal mush is also interesting and tastes better than it sounds

A pot like that would be wonderful to have at butchering time.  First throw all the bones cut from the carcass as you bone the meat for canning/freezing, and make a wonderful pot of bone broth (then can it).  Follow up by rendering out all the fat/tallow you saved in a cool place and can that after purifying it well.  Most folks waste that fat, but beef tallow is a prime frying fat due to its high smoke point, and is excellent ground into venison burger to make it more juicy.  Pork fat, of course, needs to have the lard fat, and other (inter-organ) fat rendered separately, as their uses are different.  Even deer tallow is a prime leather conditioner, and in some countries used as a muscle rub; and mutton tallow is a traditional anti-rust rub-on for woodworking tools because it does not mark the wood.  Don't waste the fat, everything is good for something, if only axle grease or shoe dressing, lol.

It would hold a lot of ice/water to cool down freshly butchered & plucked chickens, or small game.

Anyhow, I can think of lots of wonderful uses for a huge pot mostly culinary, but a few others.  

Boil your wash in it to get those whites (underwear & kitchen towels, mostly) clean & de-germed (what did you think folks did before chemicals?).  

Use to chill down large quantities of bottled water (or other beverages)
Similarly you could boil an awful lot of cowboy coffee in that thing!

Rig a rack in the bottom, use as a large steamer (does it have a cover? or you can use clean plywood)

Boil wood in it to bend it for making tools, furniture, barrel staves, whatever you need bent wood for.

Use to brine cure meat if you have a large enough cool place to keep it.  The pouring ability makes it easy to drain, rearrange the meat or change the brine if it gets ropy.

Bathe small children.

Nice find!  Wish I had room for something that size!