Homemade Postum
Recipe One
Ingredients:
- 1 quart fine ground wheat
- 1 pint coarse ground corn meal
- ½ cups molasses or dark syrup
Mix the wheat, corn-meal, and syrup. Rub them in the palms of the hand until it is well mixed. Put it into shallow baking pans and brown in a slow oven until it is a rich dark brown. It must be stirred often for even browning. Don’t try to hurry the process or it will burn. When it is done, cool and store in a sealed jar or canister. Use like any cereal coffee. Use 2 tablespoons coffee for each cup and a half of water. It may be boiled or it can be made in an electric coffee-maker.
With hot milk this makes a nice evening drink.
If you can’t buy ground wheat, you can sort whole grains of wheat and grind them in your blender. However, take them out before it grinds them into a flour.
Recipe Two
Ingredients:
- 4 cups wheat bran
- 2 cups cracked wheat
- 1 cup black strap molasses
Preheat oven to 300°F
The cracked wheat should be ground in a coffee grinder to corn meal consistency. Grind before mixing with molasses so it doesn’t gum up the grinder.
Combine all of the above ingredients in a bowl and mix well with your hands. Make sure the grain and bran are well combined and that the molasses is thoroughly mixed into the grain/bran mix. This will take about 5-10 minutes to make sure there are no pockets of molasses and that it looks like dark, very damp sawdust. Spread this mixture on two baking sheets with rims and put it in the oven. Stir mixture every 20 minutes for about 5 hours, or until the mixture is a very deep dark mahogany. Don’t try to toast this in a hotter oven because it will burn. This is a recipe that requires patience in order to caramelize the molasses, and not burn it. When you open the oven to stir it you will notice a very slight smokiness during the last hour and a half. This is normal.
Remove the baking sheets from the oven and cool on wire racks stirring occasionally to release heat faster.
To prepare: This is not instant and needs to be brewed the same as coffee, or steeped as you would tea. The ratio is 2 Tablespoons mix per cup of water.
If you need to make this for the Carob Postum Cooler (below), you should make a cup of this mix and put it into a sauce pan and reduce it on high to medium high heat until there are about 2 tablespoons left in the pan. Keep a close eye on it and be ready to put in an ice cube if you reduce it too far. It will bring it back to the amount you need and cool the mix at the same time. Swirl the cube around the pan a couple of times until you have the amount you need.
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