Farmer Boy Recipe - "Gruel"

You may know this as "Corn Meal Mush".  This is a recipe that Freda, (Almanzo Wilder's cousin) gave me. The family used to make this when they were out on the trail, trailing their sheep.  The ingredients were something that could be brought along or easy to come by.

You don't have to be out on the trail to make this!  But you might want to pretend that you are!  You can eat this for any meal of the day!

*By the way - we have our Native Americans to thank for this one! If they hadn't been grinding up dried corn and showed those European settlers, we might not have corn meal today!

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup of corn meal
• 1 Cup of cold water
• 1 Cup of hot water
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 Cup of nuts, finely ground (walnuts, hickory nuts or even acorns!)
• 1/4 Cup of cream
• dab of butter
• Optional - 1 teaspoon of sugar or brown sugar

Directions: Simply boil up a pan of salted water. Add the corn meal and salt.  Mix in the nuts. Add the cold water and cream.  Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring.  *Note: if you are making this for a crowd, you'll have to adjust the measurements.
Serve warm, with a dab of butter on each serving.

Freda said that, "once you've eaten this every morning (and sometimes at every meal), for weeks on end, you might have a taste for something else! But, when you need something, it is easy enough to make it!"  Hovever, most of her family thought it was great and couldn't get enough of it!

*Update: When I made this the other day, serving it to Freda - she had a new appreciation for it!  She said it was "Larrup'in!"

"If we expect to enjoy our life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals when we can get time or when we have nothing else to do." Laura Ingalls Wilder

I like this dish and I also put maple syrup on it.  Try it and then leave a comment here. Thanks.
The Old Man in the Bib Overalls