The product is a granulated corn meal which
keeps better than the other, and has practically the same composition,
though to some people a less desirable flavor.
If corn meal is further ground and bolted, we have corn flour. Some
of this has been put on the market lately and is proving a good
substitute for wheat flour; but the amount available is only a small
fraction of the amount of corn meal. Other important corn products
are hominy of different kinds, hulled corn, and popcorn. The latter,
usually eaten as an "extra," is really a valuable part of the diet.
Corn is the same satisfactory food whether it is eaten as mush in
New England, _polenta_ in Italy, or _tamales_ in Mexico. Many of
the people of Mexico and Central America live on corn and beans to
a surprising extent. In portions of Italy the rural population have
adopted the grain as their main food. Our corn-meal mush is their
_polenta_, which is served sometimes with cheese, sometimes with
tomato sauce or meat gravy.
_Oats_. An Englishman once taunted a Scotchman with the fact that
while England used oats only for her horses, Scotland fed it to her
men. "Ah!" said Sandy; "but where will you find such horses as you
raise in England and such men as in Scotland!"
The United States, more like England than Scotland, has used oats
mostly for feed. The crop is second only to the corn-crop. Oats are
eaten in the form of oatmeal, which is a finely granulated meal, and
as the common rolled oats which have been steamed and put through
rollers.
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