There’s a certain school of thought out there, sciency and nominally humanistic, that says: Fuck you and your elitist boutique organic food. There are eight billion hungry mouths to feed and soon there will be more; so we need to use technology to genetically modify our way out of this mess, and we as a species can ill afford to live according to your ritualistic notions of purity.
I stand somewhere off to the left of all that, an anachronistic archaic anarchic pessimistic purity addict maybe. I don’t want to live on Mars, even if the new Martians would offer me a seat to come along, which they definitely will not. I’m down in, I’m down for, the pre-Anthropocene dirt. I want to eat from it. I want to be buried in it.
I don’t own a suit that nice and I gave all my ties to the Goodwill. I lack the flowing mane and I’ve never ridden either on the Lolita Express like old Doctor Steven.
I don’t want the plastic pellets of previous salvation efforts littering the sea floor, nor the British ash falling like snowflakes on the Arctic, or genetically modified anything, nor artificial versions of brains that mimic intelligence, whatever that is.
Keep it all for yourself, and keep it out of my face. I’ll do my best to undermine everything you stand for, and my best will not even be close to good enough, and I don’t feel a need to give a shit about that either.
In half the length of a standard mortgage I’ll be pushing eighty or I’ll be gone for good. All I have left is this little space of time, and living in its moments.
I don’t want pounds of organic corn from a family-owned farm in Illinois in variations red and blue and yellow and white for health reasons, nor even precisely for aesthetic ones
It’s more of a pagan thing, quasi-religious, pseudo-indigenous. My Jesus don’t like frankenfood and if he were here to speak for himself he’d be turning over the granary tables in the Bank of Monsanto.
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There are no good ones, out here in the sticks.
90 miles away at the good store, they’re expensive and only intermittently in stock, so I’m thinking it might be worth the effort to make them, at least sometimes.
First things first.
All organic food is non-GMO, but not all non-GMO is necessarily organic. If it says USDA Organic you’re good to go on both fronts. If it’s just non-GMO, okay, but it had better be pretty cheap.
Additionally, I want corn that has the corn germ included. You have to dig pretty hard to see if any particular product does. (The hulls/husks/seed coverings are optional, in my book.)
The best way to know would be to just buy whole dried kernels.
Great River Organic Milling Great River Organic Whole Corn, 25 Pounds (Pack of 1)
Visit the Great River Organic Milling Store
Price: $51.27 ($0.13 / Fl Oz)
Yellow Corn Organically Grown in Michigan, Farmer Direct, USDA Organic Certified, Non-GMO, Vegan, Maíz, Dry 10 Lbs
Visit the Findlay’s Organics Store
$41.99 ($4.20 / lb)
But there’s a big downside to buying them whole, and that is that you need to grind them, and good grinders ain’t cheap.
Wonder Junior Deluxe Plus Manual Grain Mill Unboxing, Assembly, & Review | Prepper Pantry Equipment
This one looks best at $350, especially with the thing that turns it optionally from a hand-crank to an electric:
Wondermill Junior Drill Bit Adapter
WONDERMILL – Wonder Junior Drill Bit
Visit the WONDERMILL Store
$42.99
An even more expensive grinder
Country Living Grain Mill with Large Corn & Bean Auger
$724.00
There are cheaper ones that probably won’t last long, including this one and
Moongiantgo Corn Grinder Mill Cast Iron Manual Grain Mill Hand Grinder with Large Hopper for Corn Barley Wheat Berries Coffee Chickpeas Pepper Dried Beans Animals Feed Home Brewing
Visit the Moongiantgo Store, etc.
In most cases, from most vendors, you don’t save that much buying whole kernels, either. (The one big upside would be that other things could get ground at home too … like coffee, the grinding of which remains an only semi-solved problem.)
So this brings us to already-ground cornmeal, and to flour (masa harina).
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I’d rather stick to meal, but all-cornmeal tortillas, in my understanding, come out like more of a flatbread (which might be okay–I might adapt …).
MAKAI KI ROTI (cornmeal flat bread) || HOW TO MAKE CORNMEAL BREAD
Easy Cornmeal Flat Bread Recipe
How to make Gluten-free Chapati Soft [Easy Makki Ki Roti Recipe/Cornmeal Flour With Rolling Pin]
Homemade Corn Tortillas (no flour)
I don’t necessarily want to HAVE to adapt, though, so for purposes of making something more classic and familiar, there’s this:
Corn Tortilla Using Cornmeal & Masa Harina
So: We need either meal, for the flatbread, flour for classic corn tortillas, or both. We’re looking for organic either way, and with the corn germ included if possible ( it is).
Some options.
Grain Place Foods
Multi-product organic vendor, germ or not unknown, about $4 a pound
Congaree Milling Company
Every kind of flour/meal you could want, including blue corn, germ or not unknown (but probable), $5-6 dollars a pound
See also: HHominy, Grits, Polenta, Just Plain Corn …
Mulberry Lane Farms
Multi-product organic vendor, germ or not unknown (but probable), $8 a pound
Amazon includes the “germ” right in the title, and knocks the price down to $5.60 a pround
King Arthur Baking Company
American grown and milled, shop is very focused on baking goods $4 a pound.
Like some other companies it shouts with pride about their product being nixtamalized –soaked in lime. I haven’t made up my mind yet on whether that’s a good thing.
War Eagle Mill
“Coarsely stone-ground with nothing added or removed so the corn germ and bran are left to provide plenty of taste and healthy fiber”. And, $2.80 a pound, well hell yeah.
Masienda
On the higher end at $5.45 a pound, but very tempting anyway. They say they use ‘heirloom’ corn from little farmers, and they offer an amazing range of corn colors, including red. Nixtamalized and germ unknown. They offer a small selection of other heirloom products, and a book about traditional masa, and even a ‘sourcing report’ updated yearly on their growers, who seem to be entirely based in deep southern Mexico. For which … I might pay more. Or at least doubling back to their YouTube channel after I finish up here.
Bob’s Red Mill Organic Masa Harina — (‘everybody’s favorite‘)
This is available everywhere, even in corporate supermarkets. It very definitely includes the germ (I found and then lost the quote saying so). The price varies widely, but I did find it on Amazon, ‘thirty percent off’, at $5.60 to the pound.
Nothing wrong with any of this, except that Masienda looks a lot more interesting at the same price, and War Eagle looks damn good at half the price of either.
I think I’ll start with those two maybe.
But I also need to reconsider the grinder possibility after finding whole organic corn in bulk at the same place I get my pintos, garbanzos, and rice. For 75 cents a pound, holy crap.
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A few more related ideas.
On the cooking methods … (most people use no oil)
Blue Corn Tortillas: NO TORTILLA PRESS NEEDED!
How To Make The Perfect Corn Tortilla For Tacos
On other kinds of gluten-free tortillas and wraps … I have for example, some almond flour and garbanzo too I’d like to try.
Who Makes the Best Gluten Free Flour Tortillas? (We Review 3)
Ungodly expensive store-bought option.
KETO TORTILLAS! How to Make EASY Keto Almond Flour Coconut Flour Tortillas! ONLY 1 NET CARB!
Recipes from Arnie (lots of them, not necessary health-conscious, but always tradicional)
MEXICAN / SPANISH RICE (Traditional & Easy Recipe)
And speaking of salsas, how about those from scratch? … Non-Amazon Ole Rico Link
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When we get back I’m going to order from War Eagle and Masienda and perfect a technique.
From Ole Rico too for some experiments in chile.
If I get good, and do this on the regular, and decide that a fancy Wondermill is worth the investment, I’ll order the whole kernel seventy-five cent stuff from Azure Standard, twenty-five pounds at a time, and prepper bucket it just like I’ve been doing with the beans and rice and chickpeas for a year now.