For 2? fancy
(Page 2 of 3)
January/February 1971
By Irene Clawson
If you want hot cereal for breakfast, put 1-1/2 cups cracked wheat, 5 cups warm water and 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt into a large, heavy pan the evening before. Let this set overnight and your cereal will be softer and will cook more quickly. In the morning, stir it well and put the pan on the stove. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring frequently. Turn the heat down or slide the pan to the back of your cookstove and simmer the wheat for about 30 minutes. Stir often. It will be quite thick when done.
RELATED CONTENT
We enjoy this cracked wheat cereal cold too, especially in the summer. Often I soak the wheat in the morning and cook it in the evening. When it has cooled, I put the cooked wheat into a glass container for storage in a cool place. You can keep it in your refrigerator if you have one.
Try adding a cup of this left over cereal, a little minced onion and an egg to one pound of hamburger. Season to taste with salt, pepper and a pinch of sweet basil, It's a tasty way to add mileage to hamburger patties. Or use the cooked cereal in place of some of the bread crumbs in your next meat loaf. You'll be pleased with the flavor lift it gives.
If you'd rather bake with your wheat instead of make porridge you can soak three cups of the cracked grain overnight in two cups of warm water. Add this to your favorite four-loaf bread recipe in place of the first three cups of flour and two cups of water that it calls for. The nutty flavor is sure to make a hit with your family and mark your start toward the use of more whole wheat.
If, for some reason, you can't buy wheat direct from a farmer, look in the classified section of your telephone directory for feed stores. If that fails, there's always the natural food merchants . . . and if you can't find one of them you can occasionally locate small boxes of whole wheat hidden away on a supermarket shelf. Farmers and feed stores offer the best prices, as you might have suspected.
Always specify that you want fresh, wholesome grain for human consumption. You do not want seed wheat or wheat that has been treated with chemicals or pesticides in any other way. If possible, buy wheat that has been cleaned. It is well worth the few extra cents.
In the event that you could not—or did not—buy cleaned wheat, you can clean the grain yourself. Make a rectangular frame as large as you can easily handle from 1" X 2" board. Staple a piece of good wire door screening across this and you have a sieve with which to screen the kernels. Pour some wheat on the screen and shake it about to remove the dust. Pick out any foreign material and grit by hand. If you can do this outside on a windy day, so much the better for the chaff will blow away as you pour the wheat onto the screen.
