Corn and Red Millet and Sorghum

Corn was the principal grain of the American continents before Columbus arrived. The Indians have a thousand ways of cooking it, from soup to tortilla to hominy to popcorn. The Indians were and are also one of the most 'spiritual' peoples about the planet.

The Traditional Chinese doctors recognize the corn is in the Fire element which is the spiritual section of the Five Elements. The spirituality they recognize is the spiritedness of children, the sense of well being, the feeling of being in tune with the around you, the natural world.

In my experiments with this grain I find also a sense of being 'in time' and comfort when I eat lots of corn. I feel it even more when I eat red millet, another grain of the fire element. The current use of red millet is in bird seed: it is the tiny red seed in the mix. It makes canaries sing a lot. It is the grain of happiness. A cake made of red millet and eaten at breakfast makes the grumbling of the mind go silent all day!

Corn is almost always ground into flour before cooking. Hominy is the exception. I think is flavor and nutrition are best when fresh ground like aborigines do it Though I use a grain mill and not a mortar and grinding stone.

After grinding, you can do many things. One off these is polenta.

Polenta is anything from a soup to mush. First, get some water boiling in your pan. Add a pinch of wood ash, Indian style. Then, add the meal slowly to the water, stirring briskly with a whisk to prevent lumps. Stir well until the mixture thickens somewhat and becomes soupy.

If you want a soup, add 1/3 to 1/5 as much meal as you have water. This will be sort of runny in the end. Then add spices like celery seed, caraway, hot pepper or fennel seed, or whatever pleases you. Or add vegetables like pepper and onions, Indian turnips, carrots, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, etc, etc. This concoction will end up as the main dish of the meal. One could also add raisins, dried fruit, chopped nuts and sunflower seeds an end up with a 'desert'. Even a little honey.

If you add more corn to the boiling water, up to 1/4 or 1/3, the soup will get very thick and need to be cooked in a double boiler so it doesn't get scorched on the bottom. This mix can be cooked from ten minutes to four hours, depending on how you like it. When cooking is over and it has cooled, you will have a solid mass which can be cut up into slices and fried. This is what I call 'mush' and is an old farmers favorite. The mush can be flavored any way you like it from cracklins to dates. When I was growing up, this was often breakfast on a cold morning, and had my great uncle's maple syrup all over it.

Then, of course , there is cornbread. I make cornbread by the Betty Crocker method. Two to four cups of corn meal, 1/2 to 1 cup wheat flour, one egg (or a big tablespoon of arrowroot or kudzu or cornstarch) and a half teaspoon of baking powder. Add enough water to make a batter. Beat it good. Pour it in a greased and floured pan and bake for half an hour at 350 degrees F.

That's basic cornbread or pancakes even. Next come the modifications that make the differences.

Fresh ground popcorn or blue corn is so delicious you would not believe it. You haven't tasted corn until you've eaten fresh ground, especially popcorn. Be careful grinding popcorn into flour with an electric grain mill: it is extremely hard grain and can destroy an electric mill if you feed the popcorn into it too fast. I like to use corn that is as close to species as I can get. No hybrids bred for color or profit, just species bred for taste by the Corn Mother: colored Halloween corn and all the many kinds of popcorn.

A pinch of wood ash is very native, the grain needs some alkalai. Organic ash, please. Some of our deadliest wood preservatives survive fire and end up in the ashes. No boards at all, just twigs and branches should be put in your fire to make ashes. Milo Guthrie even makes his fire with flint and steel because he is a purist.

For different tastes use fennel seed, sunflower seed, pumpkin seeds, anise, celery seed, separately or in combination. Add a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper for the Metal element balance.

Red millet is a fire element grain which is a little too fiery to eat unmixed. I use it half and half with something else. We've been eating it for over a year now [that was in 1985], but I find that my day is always a happy one when I have a cake with reed millet in it. Probably because it has a vitamin in it found only in bird seed, Red millet is only available at pet food stores and Chinese herb sores. A word of caution is necessary here. People who have reddish faces or a red tip on their tongue most likely will not like red millet and should not eat it anyway - it will make them too hot for comfort. NEVER feed it to someone who has a fever, it will make them more sick. Red millet is also not recommended when you have a cold, constipation, diarrhea, pneumonia or AIDS, especially during AIDS.

Sorghum

(written 2007)

Sorghum is a grain in the millet family with a sugary sap in the cane. If you drive past a field of it, it looks like corn or sugar cane. A few farmers grow it, squeeze the juice out and boil it down to make a thick syrup to be used like maple syrup is used.

Sorghum syrup makes the body cold which is especially nice on a hot day in summer. If you have a reddish face, it will give you relief from the heat.

The grain from sorghum is eaten in many places around the world but seldom ever in the U.S. I have eaten very little of it, but enough to recognize that it is a Fire Element grain. Grind it into flour and cook it the same ways you cook corn.