This Offbeat Life
New Economy Cooking
Backpacking by Bus

Ingredients for do-it-yourselfers

Of course, some people just LIKE To complicate matters, and for them, we have the recipe for self-rising flour, and for the rest, just look next to the regular flour at the supermarket:

For 1 cup self-rising flour use:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• a pinch of salt

And let's say you get really crazy and want to make your own baking powder, and I might add, you need a hobby:

Combine dry ingredients

• baking soda (a base)
• cream of tartar (an acid) and
• corn starch (the filler)

To make your own Cream of tartar

combine in a test tube:

• KHC₄H₄O₆

The Stupidest Stupid Recipe of All Time:
Texas Tornado Two-Step Muffins

Ed and Martha Strom were in a hotel in Galveston, Texas, eating dinner, when the management shuttled everyone down to the basement to wait for a tornado to pass. Two good things came from this adventure: Dad’s mysterious impulse the night before to move their car to the other side of the building paid off, being the only car to survive the airborne high-speed detritus undamaged, and Mom took the time to read the Galveston paper and found this astonishing and shamelessly stupid recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 Pint Ice Cream
• 2 cups self-rising flour

Mix the ingredients into a batter, pour into muffin tins. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes.

(Since a pint = 2 cups, it's equal parts by volume of ice cream and self rising flour. If you accidentally "quality-test" half the pint of ice cream, just match the remaining volume in self-rising flour and carry on.)

Epilogue: The Japanese Government approached Dad to come train the chickens and farm animals in the art of natural disaster prediction, and Mom has established a grand new reputation by developing and serving rocky road muffins, Cherry Garcia muffins, chocolate chip mint muffins and muffins a la mode.