clinicalherbalist:

Sorghum! (Sorghum bicolor!) It’s a plant a lot like corn, but grown for its juicy stem (the seeds are a grain called milo, but that is another story). You strip off the leaves, feed the stems into a mill (when i was a kid it was a mule-driven mill, but today it was powered by a motor), and put the green sticky juice into a big metal container over a fire.
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As you heat it, three things happen: 1- water evaporates, making it thicker. 2- the sugars carmelize, making it turn a light brown colour, and 3- the chlorophyl-containing bits (chloroblasts) form a scum on the top. You skim this green stuff off, as Yani is doing in picture 3.
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Once it’s cooked down a good bit (maybe 9/10 of the volume gone) and it has gotten syrup-like, you take it off the fire and put it in jars.
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Then you can use it for baking, or to dip biscuits or corn pone in, or you can save it til winter, cook it a little more, and drizzle it into a pan of freshly fallen snow, where it will harden into candy.
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#sorghum #molasses #syrup #farmtotable