Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 300, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1911 — HIS MEAL OF WEEDS [ARTICLE]

HIS MEAL OF WEEDS

Oklahoma Farmer Prepares a Menu That Is Rather Odd. Biscuits of Alfalfa end Teddy of Broom Corn and Bugar Constitute Part of Strange Repast-Result of a Wager. • """ Guthrie, Okla.—it has remained for Gjamuel Johnson, a Logan county farmar, to demonstrate the use as food products of numerous plants and weeds that are not generally recognised as belonging to the food class. Johnson made a wager recently with a neighbor, Joseph Thompson.- that he could prepqgs a menu for an entire day from such plants , and weeds. He was to visit the out-of-the-way places on his farm, along the creeks and valleys, and also the cultivated fields, and produce breakfast, luncheon and dinner that would be pronounced by Thompson “aa good as he ever ate." The wager was for SSO and Johnson won; Here was his menu:

Breakfast—A toddy for an eye opener made from broom corn whisky and sweetened to taste with beet sugar; breakfast food of boiled kaffir corn; alfalfa meal flapjacks and milomaise sirup. -,uncheon—Kaffir corn bread, boiled cow peas, young rabbit fried In cotton lard, elderberry wine, and alfalfa cigarettes. Dinner—Alfalfa muffins with peanut batter that was mixed with cottonseed oil Instead of olive oil ;soy beans, baked; various fruits from the farm orchards; wild grape juice. Before going to bed that night Thompson placed his SSO on the table. He acknowledged that lie had been converted. The placing of the wager came about as the result of an argument between Johnson and Thompson on the subject of what to eat when the main food products of the farm fail Johnson declared that many farm products, not as a rule recognized as food, and even some wild vines and weeds could be made use off, and that if an investigation were made practically’ every farmer would learn that he could live well and wax fat on the things that, as a rule, he turns aside from. Thompson doubted the statement, and the wager was laid. “My main point, however,” said Johnson afterward, “was to prove the usefulness of broom corn, kaffir corn, alfalfa, milomaize, cow peas and numerous other farm products as articles of food. Broom corn whisky has the same flavor as that made from Indian corn; kaffir corn bread much resembles the hoecake of the southern plantation; alfalfa meal muffins have graham muffins skinned a block; mi-lo-maize sirup is just as good as any corn sirup you ever ate, while as vegetables you can’t beat cowpeas and soy beans. I have known of homesteaders in Oklahoma, during the first winter on their claims, and when they were hard up financially, to live almost entirely on kaffir corn bread and cowpeas.

“In .order, too, just to make the program strong for Mr. Thompson, I washed the dishes after each meal with soap made from the yucca plant. 1 swept the floor with a broom made of the broom weed. “It became known during the last year that a fine quality of sirup could he made from milotaalze, and as a result eastern manufacturers are contracting for large quantities of this year’n crop from the farmers of western and northwestern Oklahoma. “Alfalfa biscuits and muffins have long been the delight of men who are engaged in the manufacture of alfalfa meal for cattle feeding purposes, but it. use has not been adopted by others to any extent At a recent meeting of the National Association of Alfalfa Millers the Delegates feasted on muffins made of alfalfa meal and pro-

nounced them A No. 1. The muffins were served more as a novelty, but the banqueters ate them with relish. The meal Is made from the leaves and stems of alfalfa hay ground finely. Experiments are being made, too, to produce a breakfast food from alfalfa. “An investigation resulting from the enforcement of the national pure food laws, brought out the fact that alfalfa was used principally in the ‘makings' of that kind of cigarette that is smoked by the cowboys. The discovery was that only 27 per cent of tobacco was used to S 3 per cent of alfalfa “Elderberries produce a wine that Is exhilarating, but not intoxicating. It is believed that Fred In Wenner of Outhrle, former private secretary to several Oklahoma territorial govern-, ors, was the first to demonstrate the usefulness of kaffir corn as a food product."