It a cold morning here and I was just cooking some steel cut oats for breakfast. As it was almost done cooking I started to pick out any dark colored specks that were there. Examining them before throwing them in the sink. It kind of made me laugh and I silently asked why I'm always doing that when I cook oats, because after I check each one they are only discolored pieces of the grain.
Then it came to me. Sitting at the kitchen table as a child eating my cracked wheat cereal which I detested, an older sibling has something stuck to her finger and is getting pretty worked up showing my parents that this dark speck is actually a weevil! We all protest and put our spoons down, refusing to finish our "breakfast". My dad nonchalantly says "they won't hurt you, they're good protein."

We knew from that day forth we would always have to check our bowls for weevil. Our parents couldn't be trusted to do it for us! Gross!

My parents used to store it in big drums and there was LOTS of it to use! So, not eating it was not an option. In those days when your parents threatened to not feed you if you wouldn't eat a meal, they meant it and you had to wait until the next one to eat. Which just may be cracked wheat again!!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2014 11:10AM by stoppedtheinsanity.

All the time, weevils and all. Oh the wevils of my parents!

Of course, wheat was the staff of life! That 19th century American farmer Jo Smith sure knew how to receive revelation from god that wheat is what everybody in the world was always supposed to eat :-\

We never ate it but dh did as a child. I'm glad we were never subjected to weird mormon food.

What's funny is my ultra TBM father just recently threw out a bunch of wheat, because he's been paleo for a few years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2014 11:21AM by twistedsister.

I'm so sorry you had to choke that down. Yuck!

Nagoya Japan mission under MP Kenji Tanaka, we were REQUIRED to eat cracked wheat every morning. We bought it from the local chicken feed store in 20 lb bags. On morning I was making it for the five other mishes in the apartment. The bag getting pretty close to being empty, but I scrape out enough to cook a batch. When I was cleaning up after we at, I was scooping some more out to see how much we had left in the bag. When I looked at it this time more carefully, I could see that at least half of the brown particles were actually ants. Through the bag out, but never told anyone.

fossilman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nagoya Japan mission under MP Kenji Tanaka, we
> were REQUIRED to eat cracked wheat every morning.
> We bought it from the local chicken feed store in
> 20 lb bags. On morning I was making it for the
> five other mishes in the apartment. The bag
> getting pretty close to being empty, but I scrape
> out enough to cook a batch. When I was cleaning up
> after we at, I was scooping some more out to see
> how much we had left in the bag. When I looked at
> it this time more carefully, I could see that at
> least half of the brown particles were actually
> ants. Through the bag out, but never told anyone.

You simply rolled over and accepted someone telling you what you were required to eat? Seriously?

Every frikken day it seemed. Lived on a farm with LDS guardians. To this day I can't eat "gruel". I keep cold cereal of some kind at my desk to snack on. I’ll never forget my first bowl of corn flakes.

Freshly cracked, mind you!

My TBM Dad would bake wheat bread 2X weekly!


The poor guy was gluten intolerant...



I actually LIKED cracked wheat for breakfast

When we were out of it, we soaked actual wheat seed over night and cooked it in the morning. I like it but it was rather rubbery and required more chewing than anything else I've eaten.

Yes cheryl this is what it was. It was the whole wheat kernel soaked! SO, how easy would it have been to dump the weevil off or out of the water?

And many in my family are wheat intolerant too!

Almost every morning. It made me gag--literally. So I would let it get cold, then it was worse. If I couldn't get it down, I wasn't allowed to leave the table. Then I would miss the school bus and really be in trouble. So I learned to gag it down.

So yes. I ate cracked wheat as a child. Funny thing is, I like it now.

You would have loved our massive food storage pantry.

mush



:(

Oh yes MUSH!! THat's what it was called but my dad tried to make it fun and called it groovy snapplecracks. Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean! IT didn't make it taste any better. What did, was ALL of the sugar or honey we were allowed to pour on it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2014 11:48AM by stoppedtheinsanity.

Wheat mush. That's it!

My wife and I bought a house in the SLC Avenues about ten years ago from an old Mormon woman. She left two large aluminum garbage cans full of wheat. She thought she was leaving us a gold mine. I couldn't get rid of it fast enough. And yes, it was full of weevils.

but I loved it and make it for myself when I have time. I think it's an acquired taste, however.

Had to get rid of a half ton of wheat after we left the church. It had been fumigated but some of it was 15 years old. Yes, there was a huge wheat push in our ward. I did grind some of it for breakfast once in a while.

I refused to make home made bread. My Mom did that for a while when I was a kid--so embarrassing to have home made whole wheat sandwiches in my lunch bucket instead of Wonder Bread.

One day I did make whole wheat bagels with it, causing my VT to turn slightly green when she found out about it.

We ate it a lot. My dad was a TBM wheat storage freak. He would soak it and cook it slow so it was tender like oatmeal. We would add sugar (brown or white), or honey, milk, sometimes fruit or strawberry preseves, etc.

We found weevles once and my folks threw it away and took extra measures later, like filling the containers of wheat with carbon dioxide gas before sealing them.

I liked it for what it was....OK flavor, filled me up, was good for me, etc....but as a kid, I knew it wasn't Cap'n Crunch or frosted flakes.

I cook bulgar wheat (savory recipies) instead of potatoes or rices sometimes and it reminds me of that cracked wheat cereal a bit.

No, but I grew up dirt poor. We would get cereal and dry milk from the food bank. It was normal practice in my house to let your cereal sit in milk for a few minutes to let all the bugs float to the top.

At first I didn't mind the wheat my mother cooked up. I would eat it in a bowl with milk and a ton of honey dumped on it. So at least it was really sweet. But eating it every morning got real old quickly.

Actually, the FOULEST thing my mother would serve up from the food supply was powdered milk. To a kid who loved regular cold whole milk, the powdered stuff was NASTY!! My mother was one of those who wouldn't let you leave the table so I would sit there staring at the powdered milk concoction while it lost it's coldness and then have to drink it. Uggggghhhhh...I remember gagging the stuff down. We did that for around a year. It almost killed me from drinking any type of milk.

You need to start a powdered milk thread. It's worthy of its own! Can't belive I forgot about that. Just glad it didn't happen at the same time as the weevil mush. Let's call that tender mercies! :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2014 01:45PM by stoppedtheinsanity.

As a non-Mo, I never did, but my DW did. My MIL, who was crazy (no really, certifiable) without the Morg, in a fit of activity when DW was young, served that up.

Plus we ate it with powdered milk, because cracked wheat for breakfast isn't terrible enough by itself.


I hated the bread my mom baked as a child,but now I appreciate it. Cracked wheat is only acceptable in a tabbouleh salad now and I NEVER keep cream of crap in the house. Yuck.

We got black strap molasses to help it go down. Our wheat wasn't cracked. Super rubbery.

did the preserving with CO2 prevent infestation?



... all the money wasted on rotted 'food storage': anyone got an estimate?

It was all mormonism all the time at my house. So we ground up wheat every morning and boiled it for an hour (or however long it took), then forced it down before heading out the door to seminary.

Ridiculous of course. What we spent in gas going to and from seminary could have bought a gourmet breakfast every morning, but of course that wasn't the point. The point was to be obediant and learn to love "suffering."

We ate "mush" for breakfast almost every day. With lots of sugar it tasted great. I still like it, but have converted now to bagels and coffee for breakfast.

I remember Dad finding weavil in our barrel of wheat...and I think he then just fed what remained of that barrel to the pigs on our farm.

We had a wheat grinder and my arms got quite stout from turning it. I suppose that helped me when I played football in High School.

Mother made home made bread by hand from scratch, and put it by the wood stove while the warmth and the yeast caused the dough to rise. I miss the smell of freshly baked bread, and I miss my momma.

My parents meant to do right with their children and did the best that they knew how. How much happier they would have been if they had known that their relgion was the cause of their unhappiness in life. The miracle of it all is that I found my way out.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2014 02:32PM by darksparks.

Many Many times. It was a breakfast staple. Properly cooked it is delicious (in my opinion)

Sure did.

In fact I was at a relatives house and ate the 'hot' cereal in a way that I adopted.

Cracked wheat, oats, and wheatina (toasted cereal) all mixed together and cooked. Add sugar and milk so it is ready to eat. The consistency is such that you dip the hot cereal out with a ladle (hot like creamy soup) into your breakfast bowl. Add a giant scoop of cold vanilla ice cream on top. The ice cream melts and the combination of the hot and cold is fantastic!

ETA: A pinch of salt to flavor the hot cereal is essential too.
2nd EDIT: If you try it and like it - post a review for RFM.
3rd EDIT: Sometimes I make it with just oats and ice cream. Other times I add the Wheatina (hard to find at the supermarket) to the oats.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2014 03:53PM by jiminycricket.

My mother went through a nature phase with this. I suppose if made correctly it could be good but with SOY milk and honey (which I despise) it was truly disgusting. I went hungry for many meals. Funny, but I now love other hot cereals like old fashioned oats oatmeal and cream of wheat but with real milk and sugar/spices and fruit.

my mom used to put chocolate chips in the wheat to tempt me to eat it. Slightly better.

I thought the pop tarts that my friends ate for breakfast were heavenly and ever so civilized.

My TBM BIC husband ate that, also lots of peanut butter, sardines and powdered milk. Yuck.

Thanks for dredging up that forgotten memory. It was just as described by everyone else.

Hubby's family grew up eating almost every meal out of food storage items. Weekday breakfast was usually cracked wheat cereal with honey, powdered milk, and homemade whole wheat bread made out of their own freshly ground wheat. Weekends were special with homemade whole wheat waffles or pancakes and juice. Weekday lunch: sack lunch of tuna sandwich or peanut butter on the homemade wheat bread, a piece of fruit or vegetable sticks and water from the school drinking fountain. Weekend lunch was grilled tuna and cheese. Dinner was usually some casserole made with TVP. Everything was bought in bulk...of course they did have 8 kids, so buying in bulk would be expected.

I would literally gag my way though it each morning. I would get the puke urge every time and had to do everything I could to resist actually throwing up. Even if I did puke I'd have to eat it anyways. That stuff is NASTY!!!