Corn Griddlecakes an’ Sorghum Molasses

Another cool morning here in Central Missouri! This spring, we’ve had remarkably warm weather remarkably early, so these brief “cool-downs” have been especially welcome. And it makes one hungry for a warm, hearty breakfast!

I’ve been dipping into some small-time, down-home Ozark-cookin’ cookbooks, and Sue and I have given our Jane Austen reading a rest, in favor of reading more of the colorful folk tales Vance Randolph collected from southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Plus, last weekend was the Big Muddy Folk Festival in Boonville . . . so I had a hankerin’ for something, well, “indigenous.”

You can’t get more indigenous to the Ozarks than corn (and ham, and greens), and old-fashioned sorghum molasses is a regional treat that those poor, deprived people in big cities rarely get to have. But it was our breakfast today, and you can’t ask for anything more delicious at the breakfast table.

Recently, my favorite recipes have been coming from the sixty-year-old Good Housekeeping Cook Book, edited by Dorothy B. Marsh (New York: Rinehart, 1949). I love it because it provides tons of basic, foolproof recipes without much reliance on premade, frozen, boxed, canned or “glassed” foods. The following formulation is a golden example.

I’m completely paraphrasing this; the original appears on pages 443–44 of the book and is a variation of the basic “step-by-step” Griddlecakes recipe.

Corn Griddlecakes

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup corn meal [not too coarsely ground; also, I prefer yellow because it’s so pretty!]
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
3 tablespoons melted butter, margarine, vegetable oil, or other fat

Instructions: I’m not going to retype the book’s method, because I’ll bet you know what to do to heat the griddle or skillet to the right temperature, to know when to flip the cakes, etc. And you know how to mix the batter, too: Combine the dry ingredients and set aside; beat the eggs and beat in the rest of the liquid ingredients; then combine all together with as little stirring as possible.

The cakes will be about 4 inches in diameter; this recipe makes about 12 cakes.

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The jug of sorghum we’re currently enjoying is from a Mennonite producer, Daniel Hoover, in Bates County, Missouri. You can order it here!

Notes on the Cakes

I recommend making a double recipe of these corn cakes, so you have plenty of leftovers!

You can also make up your own convenient “corn cakes mix” by combining all the dry ingredients and putting them in a jar; all you have to measure out in the morning is about 1 1/4 cup of the mix plus the liquid ingredients.

Corn, in all its forms, is the official grain of the Americas, and leftover corn cakes are more versatile than regular pancakes when it comes to having with a dinner:

—They can go with anything down-home, like with greens and ham, say, or with a bowl of bean soup. Use them like cornbread.

—They can also go Mexican—topped with salsa and sour cream or guacamole, next to some huevos or refried beans; treat them like pudgy corn tortillas.

—Eat them with a bowl of chili!

—Or travel vicariously to South America, serving them beside grilled steak, roasted bell peppers, and a chimichurri sauce.

—They also make good breakfast sandwiches, filled with a fried egg and a couple pieces of bacon, and topped with some maple syrup. (Mmm! Maybe if we have a couple more of these cold mornings—!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!




Some links to older Easter-themed posts:

Grandma S's Easter eggs (with petrified candy!)

Grandma R's Easter Egg Cake (which is nifty any time of year, but especially in springtime)

Have a great day!

Springtime in Missouri

But is it April now, or May?

You have to admit, it was pretty much a nonwinter, and spring started in February. We’re a month ahead! I started planting lettuce and radishes the second week in February, and those plants that I haven’t picked yet are starting to bolt.

I’ve been busy, yes, yes, and you don’t want to read about that. But part of my busy-ness has been in hiking. Sue and I have made a point of “getting away” on weekends, or whenever we can claim a few hours, to enjoy the spring.

I’ve been photographing wildflowers, which has been fun. I do not consider myself any kind of “photographer” much less an “artist,” but I’m kind of proud of some of my pics. I’ve been visiting woodlands and prairies, witnessing the progression from early spring (February instead of March this year) into mid-spring (March instead of April this year).

So I hope you won’t mind if I share some of these pictures with you. I hope it’s not overkill. My camera does a pretty good job with closeups, and I honestly adore every single one of these plants.

I’m arranging roughly in order of blooming time, with the earliest of bloomers first. Several of these are long gone already, not to be seen again until next year!

Here are some flowers from Missouri woodlands.

Bloodroot.

Dutchman’s breeches.

Spring beauty.

Dogtooth violet (which is not a violet at all, but a lily).

Rue anemone.

Blue-eyed Mary.

Bluebells.

Wake robin; but I prefer the genus name, Trillium.

Here’s a trillium with fascinating genetics: It has parts in fours instead of in threes. Should we call this a quadrillium?

Yellow violet. Crazy-sounding, but true.

Wild sweet William, a.k.a. blue phlox.

Mayapple.

Wild ginger (not at all related to true ginger).

Wild geranium (yes, this is actually a type of geranium).

Jack-in-the-pulpit (in the same family as elephant ears).

Here are some flowers from glades.

Bird’s-foot violet, the two-toned form.

Shooting star.

Rose verbena.

And here are some from the prairies.

False garlic.

Yellow star grass.

Wild strawberry.

Hoary puccoon.

Wood betony.

Indian paintbrush.

And here is a bat!

It was on a shady trail one morning at Gans Creek. I’m pretty sure it’s a silver-haired bat, Lasionycteris noctivagans. I don’t know if it was ill, but it promptly flew away when I prodded it with a stick. (Gently. And yes, I’m extremely careful with bats.) Maybe it had just eaten a bug; they are known to eat off of surfaces in addition to catching bugs on the wing.




There’s some extremely bad news about bats, by the way. Please, please read this. Since silver-haired bats apparently don’t roost in caves, but sleep days in shagbark hickory crannies, hollow trees, and old birds’ nests, maybe they won’t be in trouble with that evil White Nose Syndrome.




Its face reminds me of a little dog’s. Incredibly cute. Silver-haired bats are migratory and spend nights fluttering up and down creek bottoms, hunting the zillions of pesky insects that fly in those areas.

Wouldn’t it be neat if everyone started hounding their governmental representatives about needing to find a cure for White Nose Syndrome? If not out of affection and respect for the bats, then out of hatred of mosquitoes—?

Edna Day 2012

Grandma Schroeder was born right here on Elm Street 107 years ago. Yep, right at the beginning of springtime. It was a fitting birth date for her; it matched her personality.




So we remember her each year when we put pansies into the front planters. (I’ve talked about this before.)

This year, since the weather was so unseasonably warm beginning in February, I took a chance and planted some veggie seeds for a change. Some kind of “mesclun mix,” spinach, and a few rows of radishes.




When we got a little snow about a week after I planted the seeds, I was kind of worried, but not really. It was no problem. “A little spring snow never hurt anything.”




We added pansies about a week ago. We got them this year from the Dutch Bakery in Tipton. I did tell you they sell plants, too, right? They’ve got far more than those incredible “Dutch letters”!

The radishes are coming along. I planted a bunch of different types. Looking forward to a couple of radish sandwiches!




We’ve already had several salads from thinning out the various lettuces and other greens in that mesclun mix. Oh it’s so good!




Happy spring, everyone!

Op Op Celebrates!

As of early March, the Op Op blog started on its fourth year! To date, I’ve done 484 posts—egads!

Springtime is a great time to have started something, isn’t it?

We had a wonderful sign of celebration (AND a kickoff to the start of a wonderful birthday for my sweetie, Sue) this morning! With this warm weather, we’ve had the windows open all night long, so we awakened this morning to singing birds, as well as this sight:




Yeah, it’s “Tuffy the Opossum”—it was crawling around in our redbud tree at dawn. (I was wondering what Genji, our cat, was watching so intently!) (Sorry about the picture quality, but it was dawn, and you know how autofocus works!)

This past week, an opossum had been run over on Broadway; we buried her out beneath the elderberries. There was one teeny-tiny (dead) baby in her pouch. It was rather sad, but it’s reassuring to see that some of the opossums of our “urban wildlife” are still around.




For those of you who weren’t on board at the beginning, I encourage you to take a gander at my early posts. Ho-ho-ho!

There was the Op Op “signature” martini, for instance!

And four posts in a row discussing “what is an Opulent Opossum”! Surely by now, it’s clear this is not really a blog about marsupials. Those posts explain what I’m getting at with the phrase.

Grandpa’s dandelion wine recipe, Grandma’s recipe for wilted lettuce salad, and a post about the deep “roots” of our peonies helped set the tone for the blog (I think).

Did you know that when I started this blog, I really hadn’t taken many pictures at all? It’s been fun learning, and sharing with you. I’ve created albums on my Op Op Facebook page of some of my favorite photographs.

Well, here’s to Op Op year four. Thank you, so much, for joining me.

—Julie

St. Louis Orchid Show—There’s Still Time to Go!

But don’t delay—it ends on Sunday, March 25!




Last year (remember?), I was gypped out it due to inclement weather and a busted ankle, and I all I could do was point you to our friend’s Flickr site full of her beautiful floral photographs. (Indeed, this year, she took more gorgeous photos—and yup, I’m still telling you to see her Flickr page—click here!)

But this year is different—we got to go last week! And I took a few little pictures, myself.






But you really ought to go yourself, because pictures never equal the immediate experience—of flowers, or anything else. The annual orchid show takes place at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Here’s the official website of the show.

And here’s a YouTube advertising it.



The theme this year is “Flora of China,” which is an ongoing project of the research branch of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a multi-multi-multi-volume description of every plant in China. (But the orchids in the show hailed from all over the world.)


Visitors enter the orchid show through a Chinese-style moon gate similar to the gateway to the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Chinese Garden, built to celebrate St. Louis’s sister city Nanjing. (That garden, by the way, is my favorite place at the MBG.)


The use of Chinese lanterns in the orchid show provides a tiny taste of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s big Lantern Festival that it will have this summer. Click here for more on that.


The orchid family is one of the largest families of plants in the world (you couldn’t tell it from Missouri, since most are tropical, and our temperate flora is dominated by composites, grasses, and grasslike plants). Orchids, however, are many and varied. There are about 600 genera, with about 15,000 species, worldwide (plus loads of cultivars).

Honestly, I don’t know what else to say, but GO!


I didn’t write down the names of the orchids I photographed, but many of the people taking pictures there were also photographing the name tags, for later identification. I just know this as “those freakishly bright orange orchids!”


See this little orchid bud? Well, it’s probably blooming right now! Just for you to see! Don’t miss it!

Sneaky Snake Mating Melee!

It’s in the seventies today, and although it’s plenty windy, it’s feeling a lot like spring. Our daffodils are blooming profusely, and the forsythia’s starting to flower, too.

And, of course, another sign of spring in our yard is the emergence of hibernating garter snakes! (For the record, Thamnophis sirtalis.) Thursday (March 1) was a banner day for us in this respect, since we saw, for the first time, with our own eyes, a garter snake “mating ball.”




We’d read about it but, well, words don’t do it justice!

But here’s a picture Sue took. They were right outside our front steps, in a sunny spot on our front walk, in early afternoon.

The phrase “mating ball” doesn’t describe what we saw very well. I’d call it a “writhing snarl of snakes” or a “serpent tangle” or something. I’m pretty sure there were about a dozen in this group. We watched as two snakes arrived and joined the fray.

They looked like they were having fun!

There’s not much reason for me to tell you what you can find online, but for what it’s worth, here are some selections from the “garter snake” entry in Wikipedia.

Behavior

Garter snakes have complex systems of pheromonal communication. They can find other snakes by following their pheromone-scented trails. Male and female skin pheromones are so different as to be immediately distinguishable. However, sometimes male garter snakes produce both male and female pheromones. During mating season, this fact fools other males into attempting to mate with these "she-males". This causes the transfer of heat to them in kleptothermy which is an advantage immediately after hibernation so allowing them to be more active. She-males have been shown to garner more copulations than normal males in the mating balls that form at the den when females emerge into the mating melee.

Reproduction

Garter snakes go into brumation before they mate. They stop eating for about two weeks beforehand to clear their stomach of any food that would rot there otherwise. Garter snakes begin mating as soon as they emerge from brumation. During mating season, the males mate with several females. In chillier parts of their range, male common garter snakes awaken from brumation first, giving themselves enough time to prepare to mate with females when they finally appear. Males come out of their dens and, as soon as the females begin coming out, surround them. Female garter snakes produce a sex-specific pheromone that attracts male snakes in droves, sometimes leading to intense male-male competition and the formation of mating balls of up to 25 males per female. After copulation, a female leaves the den/mating area to find food and a place to give birth. Female garter snakes are able to store the male's sperm for years before fertilization. The young are incubated in the lower abdomen, at about the midpoint of the length of the mother's body. Garter snakes are ovoviviparous, meaning they give birth to live young. However, this is different than being truly viviparous, which is seen in mammals. Gestation is two to three months in most species. As few as 3 or as many as 80 snakes are born in a single litter. The young are independent upon birth. On record, the greatest number of garter snakes to be born in a single litter is 98.