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Post by stillman on May 25, 2014 21:11:16 GMT -5
I have a commercial coffee grinder under the house I was going to grind my corn with this? Like I said a lot of unknowns but I am thinking it should do the job.
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Post by dustdevil on May 26, 2014 9:05:35 GMT -5
I have a commercial coffee grinder under the house I was going to grind my corn with this? Like I said a lot of unknowns but I am thinking it should do the job. If you want to grind to make fine flour, use a commercial coffee grinder that has a Turkish coffee setting. If it doesn't have a Turkish coffee setting, the best you can hope for is corn meal fineness.
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Post by copse on May 26, 2014 19:16:45 GMT -5
I have a commercial coffee grinder under the house I was going to grind my corn with this? Like I said a lot of unknowns but I am thinking it should do the job. If you want to grind to make fine flour, use a commercial coffee maker that has a Turkish coffee setting. If it doesn't have a Turkish coffee setting, the best you can hope for is corn meal fineness. On this note, I was watching Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown show about Mexico a couple of weeks ago. There were these two sisters that still cooked and made tortillas how they did it as children. They had these a large grinding slab, and rolled a rolling pin back and forwards. It looked quite appealing and I've been wanting one of these slab/pins for a while. I imagine shipping to NZ would be prohibitive They don't use a special technique for slicing off fresh corn kernels. Grinding those cut fresh corn kernels. Grinding some dry corn kernels. Then I was watching some show on television about Scottish history, and they had some smaller similar grinding slabs but smaller and rougher, for flour. The presenter went on to mention that it was quite wearing on the body, and those who used it their whole life would end up hunched over. He then showed the next model, which was two round bowl shaped stones that sat flatly together. The top one had a hole in the center, and a hole on the side. Whomever used it would drop grains in the center hole, then hold a stick down the center hole to keep it centered and put a stick in the side hole to give it leverage to turn. Then they'd put the whatever through it several times to get it fine. It was basically the hand grinder equivalent of the historic water mill or other forms of larger turned grindstones.
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Post by steev on May 26, 2014 19:51:13 GMT -5
The Mexican metate/petate is generally made from basalt or fine-grained lava; does a great job of grinding soft stuff like fresh corn ( generally flour corn, not much sweet corn ever grown in Mexico) or nixtamal (like hominy, for tortillas and tamales) provided you aren't the one that has to "kow-tow" to it. "Women's work", too laborious and boring for men: food preparation.
The other mill is a quern, once widely used across the Old World for home-processing of hard grain; again, "women's work", same reason.
Both are still in use where conditions make them practical and women are responsible for food preparation.
All things considered, the rise of horse-, wind-, or water-powered community mills was "one giant leap forward for woman-kind".
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Post by copse on May 26, 2014 20:45:46 GMT -5
Ah, you're a scholar and a gentleman steev, as my grandfather used to say. No sign of petate/metate with some solid googling, but quern has a few choice hits.
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Post by steev on May 26, 2014 22:12:38 GMT -5
Hating the power company, and not using lots of flour, I am inclined to a quern, myself.
The rise of mechanical milling led to the rise of "white" flour; whole-grain going rancid sooner, thanks to its valuable oils, so much faster. It's a classic case of "one step forward; two steps back". On my farm (where the power company's lines have a right-of-way, I will never hook up; they want too much money to do it, and the service fails too often, my farm being at the tail-end of the line.
BTW, I am an indifferent scholar, and few, if any, who know me, would call me a gentleman. I am pleased to be an individual struggling to survive, as must all our cousins, of every species, in a changing world. In a world focused on "ease", I must admit to looking forward to dying thinking "it was hard, but I made it this far, though it wasn't easy!".
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Post by copse on May 26, 2014 22:59:01 GMT -5
Hating the power company, and not using lots of flour, I am inclined to a quern, myself. The rise of mechanical milling led to the rise of "white" flour; whole-grain going rancid sooner, thanks to its valuable oils, so much faster. It's a classic case of "one step forward; two steps back". On my farm (where the power company's lines have a right-of-way, I will never hook up; they want too much money to do it, and the service fails too often, my farm being at the tail-end of the line. Well, it's nice to have a tool these days that you can take apart and fix yourself. If I opened my cheap and dirty coffee grinder (which was constructed so it can't be opened), which I use for grinding flax seed and dried chilis primarily, I'd find a circuit board and a microchip. Buying a hand driven grain mill and then retrofitting a bicycle to increase it's horsepower, is appealing, but expensive. Metal pipes in a can seems like a good temporary solution until one commits to the spending. Probably $20 for metal pipes in a can. $100+ for variable speed electrical grinder. $600+ for hand mill. Pipes in a can it is! You don't have power? How do you post?
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Post by steev on May 26, 2014 23:38:38 GMT -5
I have a place in town, from which I run my business, on the grid.
I have my farm, out of town, off-grid.
One day, I'll bail on town and live entirely off-grid.
If I have to choose between internet and grid, I don't know what I'll do, yet. I think it depends on what looks to serve my needs at the time. I feel no loyalty, whatsoever, to the internet/grid, as I think they feel none to me. While I have no antipathy whatsoever for folks in India or the Philippines, I don't know why I should give a husky fuck for the companies that outsource to them, for the benefit of their corporate officers and share-holders.
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Post by stillman on May 27, 2014 4:11:11 GMT -5
what about a traditional mortar and pestle I guess I could use that too for the really fine stuff. I have to grow it all first, horse and the cart and all.
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Post by dustdevil on May 27, 2014 22:22:53 GMT -5
what about a traditional mortar and pestle I guess I could use that too for the really fine stuff. I have to grow it all first, horse and the cart and all. They make hand cranked flour grinders for about $50US...often seen on eBay. They look a lot like the hand cranked meat grinders. They work well to make fine flour in one pass if you use dried flour corn. If you use dried flint corn which is harder, you probably won't get as fine of flour. I've seen small hand held Turkish coffee grinders, but I don't know if one of those will work.I've had Maiz Morado before, but I never tried grinding the kernels. Perhaps you can try regrinding a second time with your coffee grinder or a hand cranked grinder. Mortar and pestle would be very difficult to do. I wonder if a coffee shop which has grinders with a Turkish setting would grind your corn for a price? I guess it all depends on how far you live from a big city. Also,if you end up with a handful of kernels or a massive quantity.
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Post by blueadzuki on May 28, 2014 5:44:42 GMT -5
A commercial place would probably either refuse or charge a lot to grind. Not so much because of the time to grind, but because of the time it would take them to clean the residual corn flour off the innards (in this world of allergy lawsuits, I imagine no commercial coffee house would take a "It's just corn flour; who cares if some gets in the coffee?" attitude.)
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Post by stillman on May 28, 2014 16:00:38 GMT -5
I'll look into it further I have time. If I make hominy I can process it into tortillas fairly easily. I havea commercial kitchen to use here so access to some processing machinery.
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Post by steev on May 28, 2014 19:30:16 GMT -5
The rise of rental commercial kitchens is a great thing, allowing folks who just have an occasional need, to fill it. I scored a quantity of plastic clam-shell containers and boxes in which they were packed from a jam-maker in Emeryville last year; very nice for transporting/portioning small tomatoes and such (even if they are all labelled "organic apricots").
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Post by 12540dumont on Jun 1, 2014 15:41:41 GMT -5
foothillfarm.blogspot.com/I'm going to try and use my Kanga Pango in place of Maize Morado. Also Dar's Drought Tolerant photos are here.
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Post by stillman on Jun 3, 2014 2:04:26 GMT -5
Are you trying to make the drink? Or do you use maize morado some other way?
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