Oatmeal: How Do You Make Yours?

[Bugbear]

Hmmm- I've never heard of such a thing before, except for the Appalachian practice of eating "rock hominy", or in regular English, parched corn, and in British English, dried maize, as a travel food. Experts will explain that corn/maize isn't digestible uncooked (or made into grits, don't ask how that's done), but rock hominy has stood me well when I actually got around to preparing it (ie, with a hammer) and carrying it with me. But... perhaps the corn in cooked in the parching? As to the digestibility of raw oatmeal, you must stand as a tribute to that.

You take a sip of water now and then.

Flint corn, which is popcorn, is very hard, and would probably eventually break one's teeth. Flour corn has a fairly hard outer shell but a softer core, and can be chewed upon, but is probably not good for the teeth either. If they are processed in lime or something like that, as discussed in an earlier post, that outer shell and other parts are broken down and drained away from the corn etc. It's all digestible to one degree or another.

You can eat the corn when it is young, kind of like sweet corn but starchy tasting, and you can also eat the sweet corn "green" and fresh off the stalk without any cooking. The problem comes when corn is the only food being eaten. The lime processing releases additional nutrients in the corn, and that combined with beans for a few missing proteins, and squash for some minerals, and a slice of animal here and there, is a complete diet. Squash also fills you up quite a bit. Like I said, it's the alchemy of the Ancient Ones.