Since the current owners of the Postum trademark aren't showing any interest in bringing Postum back, you may be better off making your own. Some imaginative people have done just that. You'll find two different recipes to make something "like" Postum below, followed by recipes that call for it. In order to make the latter recipes, you will first either need to find a jar of Postum (if available) or make your own using one of the homemade Postum recipes. I found all of these recipes in various places on the net and I really can't tell you where. I supposed I could search for them again but even I found them, would the places I end up be the original sources? All I can say is that I am not the original source of any of this — I just compiled it into a single source.

Homemade Postum Recipe One

Ingredients:

• 1 quart fine ground wheat
• 1 pint coarse ground corn meal
• 1/2 cups molasses or dark syrup

Mix the wheat, corn-meal, and syrup. Rub them in the palms of the hand until it is well mixed. Put it into shallow baking pans and brown in a slow oven until it is a rich dark brown. It must be stirred often for even browning. Don't try to hurry the process or it will burn. When it is done, cool and store in a sealed jar or canister. Use like any cereal coffee. Use 2 tablespoons coffee for each cup and a half of water. It may be boiled or it can be made in an electric coffee-maker.

With hot milk this makes a nice evening drink.

If you can't buy ground wheat, you can sort whole grains of wheat and grind them in your blender. However, take them out before it grinds them into a flour.

Homemade Postum Recipe Two

Ingredients:

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees F
• 4 cups wheat bran
• 2 cups cracked wheat
• 1 cup black strap molasses

The cracked wheat should be ground in a coffee grinder to corn meal consistency. Grind before mixing with molasses so it doesn't gum up the grinder.

Combine all of the above ingredients in a bowl and mix well with your hands. Make sure the grain and bran are well combined and that the molasses is thoroughly mixed into the grain/bran mix. This will take about 5-10 minutes to make sure there are no pockets of molasses and that it looks like dark, very damp sawdust. Spread this mixture on two baking sheets with rims and put it in the oven. Stir mixture every 20 minutes for about 5 hours, or until the mixture is a very deep dark mahogany. Don't try to toast this in a hotter oven because it will burn. This is a recipe that requires patience in order to caramelize the molasses, and not burn it. When you open the oven to stir it you will notice a very slight smokiness during the last hour and a half. This is normal.

Remove the baking sheets from the oven and cool on wire racks stirring occasionally to release heat faster.

To prepare: This is not instant and needs to be brewed the same as coffee, or steeped as you would tea. The ratio is 2 Tablespoons mix per cup of water.

If you need to make this for the Carob Postum Cooler (below), you should make a cup of this mix and put it into a sauce pan and reduce it on high to medium high heat until there are about 2 tablespoons left in the pan. Keep a close eye on it and be ready to put in an ice cube if you reduce it too far. It will bring it back to the amount you need and cool the mix at the same time. Swirl the cube around the pan a couple of times until you have the amount you need.

Carob Postum Cooler

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon carob powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Postum
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon dark molasses
• 4 ounces cold vanilla soymilk
• Ice cubes as needed to fill mug

Put the boiling water in the bottom of a large coffee mug. Stir in the carob powder and the Postum. Add the molasses and stir until dissolved. Add the soymilk and ice cubes to fill the mug. Add water if needed. Makes one serving.

Optional: Throw the ice cubes and soy milk in a blender to crush the ice and then mix it all together in a mug.

Dainty Lady Cake

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs, separated
• 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar, divided
• 4 tablespoons of water
• 1 1/2 cups of cake flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• 3 tablespoons of Postum
• 1 can of prepared cream cheese frosting

Preparation:

Beat the egg yolks until they're very thick. Add half of the sugar and continue beating until mixed. Add the water and all the dry ingredients that have been sifted together three times. Fold gently. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites combined with the remaining sugar.

Bake the mixture in two greased 9-inch cake pans at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 35 minutes. Let it cool completely before frosting the cake with the cream cheese frosting.

Total Time: 1 hour
Makes: 10 slices of cake
Serves: 8-10 people

Russian Black Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 1 cup rye flour
• 1 1/2 cups of unbleached white flour
• 1/2 cup of oat bran
• 1 teaspoon of brown rice syrup
• 1 teaspoon pf salt
• 1 teaspoon of Postum
• 1 teaspoon of minced dried onion or 1/2 small raw onion, finely chopped
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa
• 1 tablespoon of vinegar
• 1 cup of water
• 2 tablespoons of caraway seeds

Place all ingredients in a bread machine. Use dough setting. At the end of the dough cycle, remove the dough to a non-stick bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set the dough in a warm, draft-free place to rise until nearly doubled in bulk. This may take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.

Prepare a baking sheet or loaf pan, sprinkle with cornmeal. Punch down the dough and on a floured board, shape it into either a loaf or dome. Let the bread rise once again until almost doubled in bulk.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees F and then lower the oven to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 30 minutes, or until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

Healthy Drinking and Healthy Eating

Now that you've read about some healthy drinking recipes (if you consider Postum healthy), you need to take a look at some healthy eating recipes to complement them.

After all, healthy drinking and healthy eating is what this is all about, right?

Similar Posts:

• What is Postum?
• Coffee or Postum? You Decide

I normally don't recycle pictures to use on multiple articles, but I really have to make an exception when it comes to coffee beans. There only so many ways to present them and hunting down new photographs is a chore in itself. Anyway, that's obviously not what this article is about. No, I just wanted to throw out some things about coffee beans that some people aren't aware of.

Coffee Beans are NOT Beans

When my 23-year old son doesn't know that coffee beans aren't real beans, it's time to mention it over and over again and as often as possible. People who aren't familiar with the history of the coffee plants, especially young people, take way too much for granted by the way things are called.

Coffee beans start out as berries on the coffee plants. They're then dried and the seeds, the part that people call the beans, are removed and dried before heading off on their next stop in the journey from the plant to your stomach.

Roasted Coffee Beans

From what I've seen, most coffee beans sold AS coffee beans in supermarkets and other such places are roasted beforehand. What I mean to say is that you usually can't find coffee beans that haven't been roasted yet. I know raw coffee beans are available; otherwise coffee roasters wouldn't be available to the general public.

I don't trust my cooking skills, much less any kind of roasting skills. I could screw up barbecued hot dogs. No, I will always leave that step of the process to others.

Coffee Grounds

I really don't have any idea why ground coffee is called "coffee grounds". I guess it was coined by some unimaginative per person way back when. I would call it coffee flakes or coffee powder (I've actually heard "coffee powder" used and it's even on some instant coffee labels), but never coffee grounds.

In most supermarkets, heck even in most supermarkets in the Philippines (where I live — no, I'm not a Filipino before anyone asks me yet again), you can buy coffee beans that only need to be ground up to be used. Usually, one or more coffee grinders are available nearby, including generic bags to put the results in.

Although coffee grinders are available for home use, it's still another area step in the process that I'll gladly leave to someone else. I won't use a coffee grinder to grind coffee beans at the market and I won't grind them at home. It's just way too easy to get coffee that only needs one step from the container to the cup and I'm basically a lazy person when it comes to doing things for myself.

There is a special kind of coffee bean that I can't seem to find here in the Philippines, that I'm really fond of, but I'm not going to mention it yet. I'll save that for my next article. After reading all that I wrote above, can you guess what I'm going to be writing about? Hint: They're sold at places that have the same title as this blog (or a slight variation of using "or" instead of "and").

Similar Posts:

• Memories of Mornings with Folgers Coffee
• Is Coffee Beginning to Get Scarce?
• Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans
• The New Starbucks Coffee Shop at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone
• Is Kona Coffee a Gourmet Coffee?