The first article for this month’s contest is presented by Hiwall.  By way of reminder, I am on vacation for the
summer.  Instead of more article re-runs, I thought we’d continued
learning from you readers.  (However, unless we have a deluge of
articles, Saturdays and Sundays will still be reruns–except today, because I already told Hiwall his article would post on the first.)  The writer of
the best article each month will receive the PSD book of his/her choice.

My goal this
past year was to make flour from mesquite and I did meet this modest goal. To
do this I planned ahead and I was able to purchase an old hand crank meat
grinder and a hand crank grain mill. Both were used but looked in excellent
shape. The all-metal grain mill looks much like the old-style meat grinder but
has two flat plates between which the milling takes place. New hand meat
grinders and new grain mills like what I bought are still made and readily available.
Many can be found on Ebay and other online sites. Thrift stores often have
these items also. The ones I bought were found used at yard sales and I ended
up having only a $12 total investment for two items (yes I am cheap!)

I had read
about how people ground mesquite on the internet and they used many different
means to do so (some quite expensive). This was something I wanted to try
because the land here has plenty of mesquite trees and they produce an
incredible amount of seed pods even in very dry years. While the desert in the
American southwest does contain many edible wild plants, it is still a desert
and all plants are sparse. Except for mesquite that is, at least in my general
area. 

The mesquite
pods are green and when ripen they turn cream colored and get dry and hard. The
pods look remarkably like regular string bean pods. And they are about the same
size too. Like all natural growing things, the pods even on the same tree ripen
at slightly different times. The trees have many thorns and even the pods are
very sharp on the end when they are dry. Leather gloves are a good idea when
picking the pods. A cloth bag or an old pillowcase makes a handy thing to use
when gathering pods. As always when in the desert, be mindful of the weather,
wear a hat and drink plenty of water. 

The normal
plan is to pick the pods from the trees just before they fall to the ground –
once on the ground, they are quickly infested with bugs (which just add protein!).
Once picked the pods then are further dried and after that ground into flour.

Once
completely dry, the actual beans inside the pods become incredibly hard. So
hard they resist almost all milling efforts. American Indians ground them
between large coarse rocks using a lot of effort. Nowadays in many areas where
mesquite trees are common, there are traveling hammer mills that go from town
to town to mill the very hard mesquite pods/beans. Obviously most people do not
own their own hammer mills.

I had a plan
and I did this a little different. I first picked the pods and then ran them
through the meat grinder before any further drying as I figured they would be
too hard after they were fully dried. Oh, they felt dry on the outside and looked
quite dry but if you cut them open with a sharp knife, the actual beans inside
were still relatively soft. Once completely dry you could never run them through
a meat grinder I don’t think but I admit I never tried it.

The meat
grinder was in no way ever designed for this task but it did the job flawlessly.
The only problem was the effort required to grind the pods. It was quite a
chore. I suppose you could hook up a diesel engine from a dump truck or something
to do this grinding but I did manage to do it by hand. One thing that could be
done would be to make a longer crank, so you have added leverage to make it
easier. I should mention that I am no longer a young man and no longer in my
prime. A strong young man (or woman) would likely not have a problem grinding
the pods. I looked but there were no strong young men or women available at the
time I ground the pods! 

After the
meat grinder had ground the pods into what I would call crumbles, I put those
grindings in my electric dehydrator for about eight hours to make sure they
were very dry. I checked them a couple of times and by the end, the crumbles
were noticeably lighter in weight and completely dry as far as I could tell.

The true
test of dryness was when I ran them through the hand crank mill. This operation
went very easy and could have been performed by kids if some were available. The
hand mill I have is adjustable and I did fiddle with that to get it where I
liked the resulting product. I see no reason a person could not run the product
through the mill twice if you thought it needed it. I then sifted all the resulting
flour and I had my first ever mesquite flour. The resulting mesquite flour is
up to thirty percent sugar. You can tell that right away when you get some on
your hands because it is rather sticky. Keep that sugar content in mind when
using this flour; obviously, you can cut back on adding additional sugar in
your recipes. Also, that high sugar content of those Mesquite pods means that
after TEOTWAWKI you could very likely make moonshine from them too. For
medicinal use only of course!

After I had
my mesquite flour, I promptly went to the house and made some muffins to try
out this flour and they turned out—well, just okay. Keep in mind the flour
contains a lot of sugar and no added sugar is required in most baking. Getting
the flour on your hands, it becomes sticky just like you are handling candy or
sugar. This ‘sugar’ also causes problems in some grain mills I have read where
it sticks and coats the plates or grinding wheels (burrs). The flour even after
it was sifted contained a lot of fiber but this did not in any way spoil the finished
product (at least for me). Also, this mesquite flour is totally gluten-free for
those allergic or sensitive to gluten. The flour is light brown in color and
end products made with this flour are a darker brown.

Using mesquite
flour for baking, I found it very problematic. Most people that have used it
mix it with regular flour in varying percentages. I think they all use mostly
wheat flour and just maybe twenty percent or less of the mesquite flour in the
mix. The mesquite flour I could not get to rise so my first cupcakes looked more
like cookies. And it does have a very unique taste. Like any taste some might
find they like it and some not so much. I rather like the taste.

Another
serious problem I found when using pure mesquite flour was baking it enough to
get the center done. I admit it resisted all my efforts not to have the outside
way over baked and still not have inside baked thoroughly. Flat cookies or
pancakes worked okay but anything I tried thicker would always end up uncooked
in the center and overcooked on the outside. It is still a work in progress.
That is why mesquite flour is mixed with other regular flour. I so far have
never tried mixing with other flour because my plan was to use the mesquite
after the end times when regular food products were unavailable or at least
sparsely available. I am a guy and baking is not my area of expertise. Someone
with more baking experience would very likely have much better luck than just
an old farm boy like me. But I am tenuous and I will continue to harvest the
readily available mesquite pods and work on making more and more recipes for
our use. My wife is a trooper and does taste all my creations and sometimes
offers suggestions to make a better end product. So far she has left all the
baking using this flour to me, but maybe in the future I can entice her to get
involved in the actual baking and recipe-making experiments.

Overall I
think this is a viable option for a source of flour in a SHTF situation for
those living in the southwest. It can be totally done without the use of power (you
could use the sun instead of a dehydrator) and requires no planting or anything
like that. A solar oven could be used for the baking. Mesquite is a very common
tree and yes the flour is gluten-free. I’m sure there are many ways to accomplish
this task that are likely better than the method I used but I did it this way
and it worked for me at a very modest cost. If you have regular flour available
the locally harvested mesquite flour could be used to greatly extend your
normal flour supplies. Anyone living near mesquite trees has seen just how full
of pods each tree gets, and it is a shame to let that valuable resource go to
waste.

So in
closing I would urge every prepper in the southwest living in areas where mesquite
trees are common to take full advantage of this natural resource.