Frank’s Fabulously Flavorful Famously Fructose-Free Fearlessly Fattening Fun Fried Flapjacks

Serves one:

1/3 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup corn meal or polenta or hominy grits or a blend thereof
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons powdered milk (optional)
1 egg or enough whole egg powder for 1 egg (optional)
Water (or milk) (about 1/2 cup)

Blend the dry ingredients.

Mix in enough water (and whole egg if desired) to make a thick batter – one that requires the cook to spread the batter with a tool so the batter is at least ½” thick when it starts to cook when fried on a hot griddle.

Fry on hot griddle or cast iron skillet - an ungreased one (as shown below) or greased. Bacon grease is great. Other oils OK. Buttery spreads don’t work well for me when frying flapjacks. Cooked outdoors on a slightly smoky manzanita or fruit wood fire while surrounded by family and friends makes them taste even better.

Slightly smokey cook fire

Here you can see that the batter is quite stiff.

Here the batter has been spread ont to the desired thickness and kinda circular

Here it is "bottom side up" - it's actually more toasty than shown in the photo.

Serve with your favorite toppings plus eggs and/or bacon/ ham or whatever pleases you.

Ready for toppings

Strawberry something* and buttery spread toppings

Ready for eating.

* Strawberry something = a mixture of pureed fresh strawberries, freeze dried strawberries from Sgt. Mark for texture and to absorb excess moisture from the puree, and honey. Good stuff maynard!!

Some folks might say these flapjacks are “gritty”. I prefer to say that they have “texture” and that’s the way I like them. Polenta makes a grittier and more chewy flapjack than cornmeal. Hominy grits have more B vitamins than corn meal or polenta.

The batter will “stiffen-up” if you let is set very long before frying. That’s OK – just mix in a wee bit more liquid to get the consistency you want.

Wax bullet shooting

Wax bullet shooting on my back porch.

If you want to be able to use guns for self-defense you first need to learn to use them and then frequently practice with them to maintain proficiency. Shooting wax bullets in my .357 Mag revolvers is a cheap way to practice – especially when practicing “point shooting” rather than “aimed shooting” (which usually consumes much less ammo per shooting session). Point shooting is what one is most likely to have to do when shooting in a close range self-defense situation. 

Wax bullet shooting makes little noise – no more than an old fashioned child’s cap gun. It is much safer than shooting regular ammo in that the projectiles weigh only about 11 grains versus the 157 grains I use in my self-defense ammo and the wax bullets travel at a much lower velocity and have a greatly reduced hazardous range.  

However, wax bullets are hazardous and could easily put out an eye or cause serious bruising on other parts of the body. With one exception, wax bullet shooting definitely requires observance of all standard shooting safety rules. The exception is that ear protection is not required. Wax bullets can ricochet towards the firing line and therefore eye protection is a must for shooters and observers even if they are behind the firing line. 

Two photos below show my wax bullet shooting range with today’s targets – an empty oatmeal box, empty soda cans, and empty water bottles. The third photo shows the damage done by a wax bullet to a soda can. Needless to say, wax bullets hits on these targets sends them flying – great for recreational shooting when instant gratification is a major goal.

My wax  bullet range

The targets - up close

Soda can after wax bullet hit.

Notice that the bullet went in one side & out the other

Other targets I use include an empty soda-acid fire extinguisher, a person-sized empty propane tank, and various sized pieces of sheet metal – all of which make beautiful “gong sounds” when hit by wax bullets and all of which are not damaged by the bullets. Paper and cardboard targets can also be used so you can tell exactly where you hit the targets.

Once you equip yourself to do wax bullet shooting the cost is quite low. The cartridge cases are reusable, no expensive powder is used, and the cost for wax bullets is less than 1¢ each. The only real expense is for primers – less than 5¢ each.

Future posts will address making of the bullets, wax bullets for some of my lever action rifles, and for shotguns.

Note - wax bullet shooting isn't practical for use in semi-automatic firearms that are recoil or gas operated..

Biscuits

In my last post regarding biscuits I mentioned that my first effort at making them produced a pleasantly palatable but not quite perfect biscuit. My second attempt eliminated my “burned bottoms” problem. This was accomplished by placing a piece of aluminum foil on the shelf below the baking pan. But, the biscuits still didn’t rise to my satisfaction and they were slightly doughy on the inside.

This morning, rather than trying to adjust Enola Gay’s recipe, which I used in my first two attempts, I decided to simplify the whole thing and use what amounts to a reduced liquid and increased baking powder version of my not quite world famous griddle cake recipe. Today’s version consisted of 1 C whole wheat flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 2 Tbsp powdered milk, 1 Tbsp butter, and just enough warm water to make a stiff dough that I kneaded thoroughly and rolled to ½” thickness. Biscuits were cut into 2” diameter circles using an empty tomato sauce can as my biscuit cutter (a fine piece of junk-pile engineering even if I do say so myself). These were baked 13 minutes at 400 deg. F. in a shiny bottomed baking pan (no aluminum foil this time). They turned out great – not doughy and slightly golden crusted all around. The TAZ agreed that they were much better. Next time I’ll bake them a wee bit longer for a crisper crust.

One other “product improvement” will be tried soon. I’ll roll two ¼” thick slabs of dough, very lightly dust one of them with flour, and then stick the two together with the floured surface on the inside. After this I’ll cut the biscuits and then bake them. Hopefully, this will produce a biscuit that can be pulled apart easier into two equal halves for buttering with your favorite buttery spread along with some of my unsweetened El Dorado County Fuji or Pink Lady apple butter or my strawberry “sumpin” spread (pureed strawberries, freeze dried strawberries for texture and reduced runniness, and honey).

Now, some folks ask why use whole wheat flour when everyone knows that white flour makes better biscuits. Well, I’m not “everybody”. I’m a skeptic when I’m told something that “everybody” knows to be true. Perhaps I’m stubborn. Old Lady Hordon, my 6^th grade teacher, told me in early 1944 (just before D-Day) “Your are a stubborn German – Just like your uncle Karl”. She told me this when she told me something that I refused to believe just because it was in the school’s science book. She was right – I am a stubborn German. But I knew I was right and I was able to prove myself right and the book wrong 20 years later. Unfortunately, by that time she was no longer available for me to set her straight. That would have been sweet!!! (She was my favorite person to dislike intensely because she tried to “teach” me many things that I – humble me – knew weren’t true).

So why do I insist on whole wheat flour??? First, it’s what you get when you grind your own flour rather than buying it in the store. Second, it’s more nutritious because it contains the wheat germ and bran that are missing in white flour. And, third, I like the taste and texture of whole wheat products better than white flour despite the fact that whole wheat flour can be stored for only a few months rather than for years.

Vaya con Dios

Solar Energy Concentrates

During last week's 2011 gathering of all the Zogis, the younger members of the clan scoured the hinterlands of Central Zogistan in search of piles of solar concentrates that the IZ (Grandpa Zog) had previously harvested. They gathered them together into one central pile in a shady location close to Zogistani solar energy granual storage facility (the woodshed). At this location the IZ will process the pile into 16 inch long granuals for heating the humble abode of the IZ and his bride for the last 56 years, the TAZ (Tsarina of All Zogis). He must do this chore soon. The annual period of global cooling and deluge is forecasted to begin in late October.

The IZ estimates that this pile of solar concentrates contains the energy of at least 13.7 barrels of imported middle eastern crude.

The IZ and the TAZ thank all the Zogis who participated in this effort.







Biscuits

Biscuits 

Yesterday, 19 June, marked the end of the 2011 Gathering of the Zogi Clan. Every one, except Grandpa Zog (IZ) and Grandma Zog (TAZ) departed Central Zogistan to return to their respective Zogi encampments located throughout the various western states of the USA. For the IZ and TAZ it was a day of rest and recuperation. 

Today, the IZ got up feeling quite refreshed and decided to try his hand at making rolled biscuits from scratch using whole wheat flour rather than white flour as prescribed in Enola Gay’s recipe which is posted at http://paratusfamilia.blogspot.com/2011/06/hoppin-john-and-southern-raised.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ParatusFamilia+%28Paratus+Familia%29 . She has lots of good stuff on her blog spot. 

For me, biscuit making for the first time was a most interesting experiment. I found that making them was easier and faster than I had anticipated. And they turned out to be pleasantly palatable - but not quite perfect. They were slightly burned on the bottom and didn’t rise quite as high as I had expected. I expect that both problems can be solved by placing a piece of aluminum foil on the lower shelf in the oven and adjusting the yeast or salt content in the dough or letting the biscuits rise a bit longer or rolling the dough a bit thicker or adding a bit of gluten to the flour or any one of several things. At any rate, they were good and will get better. 

I served them to the TAZ with a buttery spread and home made unsweetened apple butter. She ate one – all of it – in addition to her usual breakfast of one fried egg and yogurt. I take than as an endorsement of palatability. She made no mention of the slightly blacked bottom and simply gave me a “thumbs up” sign. But, perhaps she did that just to be nice to me (she does that sometimes) especially since today is our 56^th wedding anniversary. 

I also baked a loaf of whole wheat bread this a.m. which turned out great – as usual. The recipe I new use differs considerably from the recipe provided in my Zojirushi bread machine book. I’m hoping that my good fortune in be able to improve my bread recipe will repeat in my biscuit making endeavors.  

Why make biscuits you say – especially when you can buy refrigerator biscuits so cheaply at the super market? There are multiple answers. One is that with my own recipes I can make very low sodium baked goods and baking powder baked goods that contain no sodium or aluminum (a possible contributor to Alzheimer’s). And I can make whole wheat baked goods rather than white flour goods. (Yep – I confess to being a semi-serious health food nut. I future blog posting I’ll also confess to some of my other quirks.) 

That’s all for today folks. In future postings I’ll explain Zogistan, Zogis, IZ, TAZ, stuff about the gathering of the clan  and post a picture of the Zogistani flag just in case anyone is interested.

I'll also have a link to Sgt. Mark's blog.

IZ