Parching ripe corn on the ear was a winter custom; but boys herding horses in the summer also parched whole ears sometimes for their midday lunch.
We did parch other kinds of corn thus, besides soft white and soft yellow, but they were not so good.
The gummy was not cooked in this way.
Parching Hard Yellow Corn with Sand. We sometimes parched hard yellow corn in a clay pot of our own make, with sand. Down on the sand bars by the Missouri we found clean, pure sand; if I wanted to parch hard yellow, I put a handful of this sand in my clay pot.
The pot I now set on the coals of the fire place until the sand within was red hot. With a piece of old tent skin to protect my hand, I drew the pot a little way from the coals and dropped a double handful of corn within. I stirred the corn back and forth over the sand with a little stick.
When I thought the corn was quite heated through, I put the pot back on the coals again, still stirring the corn with the stick. Very soon all the kernels cracked open with a sharp crackling noise; they burst open much as you say white man’s popcorn does.
Hard yellow corn parched in this way was softer than even the soft corns parched in a pot without sand.
No variety of corn was good cooked in this way, except hard yellow; no other kind would do.
Mạdạpo´zi Pạ´kici, or Lye-Made Hominy. There was another way in which we prepared hard and soft yellow and hard and soft white; this was to make it into hominy with lye.
I collected about a quart of ashes; only two kinds were used, cottonwood or elm wood ashes. When I was cooking with such wood and thought of making hominy, I was careful to collect the ashes, raking away the other kinds first.