For 2? fancy
(Page 3 of 3)
January/February 1971
By Irene Clawson
If you want to wash the grain, pour about a gallon at a tune into a bucket of clear water. Swirl the wheat around, drain off the water and thinly spread the kernels in a flat pan or on a nylon net screen that has been tacked to a frame in the same manner as your cleaning screen. Let the wheat dry thoroughly.
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Store the cleaned grain in a cool dry place in large containers. I prefer to use gallon glass jars that may be purchased from cafes or drive-ins for a few cents each. Each jar holds about 6-1 /4 pounds of wheat which is approximately what our family uses in a week.
Generally I grind the gallon of kernels into cracked wheat for cereal or bread. If I find that I want some fine whole wheat flour, I adjust my mill and run the grain through once or twice more. It's always best to grind only what can be used in a week's time or the ground grain will lose both flavor and vitamins.
Uncracked wheat kernels do not have this failing and wheat with a moisture content of less than 10% will keep indefinitely if it is stored properly.
If you keep wheat for a year or more it should be aerated approximately once every six months. Pour the grain into large, clean, fairly flat boxes and let it set a few hours. Stir it once or twice during this period, pour it back into the same containers and again store them in a cool dry place. As you buy more wheat, date each jar with a marking pen so that you'll use the oldest grain first.
It has been estimated that a child consumes 70 pounds and an adult 300 pounds of wheat in bread, cereal and other baked goods every year. If stored wheat were to be your principle diet in an emergency, of course, these amounts would not be enough to last a year. At any rate, a few hundred pounds of wheat (no more than, say, five or ten bushels) stored in the home might be cheap insurance against local or national disaster . . . or just against going hungry in leaner times.
Naturally, we hope those disasters never come . . . but it's nice to know that our stash of wheat and Corona mill will allow us to handle them if they do. It's also satisfying to think that our family enjoys more robust health by substituting whole grains for the refined, bleached, devitalized white flour eaten by so many of our fellow citizens these days. And best of all, in some ways, is the delicious feeling of frugality we notice every time we smack our lips over one of those heaping half-cent bowls of hot cereal.
There's no doubt about it: We've got dollars-and-cents proof that good nutrition doesn't cost . . . it saves!
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