Post? Content? What?!
Sat, Aug. 13th, 2011 12:21 pmYesterday I tried to do that NPR 100 Best(?) Sci-Fi books meme and Dreamwidth obligingly ate my post, and then posted ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhivolution's answers instead of mine. Since I don't feel like spending an hour+ to recreate my witty and incredibly intelligent and insightful post (ha!), I want to instead write briefly about something I love.
It's August in Pennsylvania, and to me that means only one thing: It's sweet corn season. Now, to be fair, thanks to the efforts of Florida and later Lancaster county, we've been eating fresh sweet corn since May or June. But starting in July and August the really good local sweet corn starts to come in. We have two local dairy farms around here who plant people corn in addition to their cattle feed corn. There are also lots of little mom-and-pop stands that still sell on the roadside honor system as well as some large farms that ship their sweet corn to the local places around here for sale.
Sweet corn season for me is the height of summer. You bring your prize home from the local farm store -- silver queen or mixed, it's a personal preference, really. You sit outside to shuck it, fighting gnats, mosquitos and bees who tend to swarm you while you're engaged in this activity. For those of you who've never shucked an ear of corn, it's an art form. Not only do you have to peel off the rough green husk (which gets progressively softer and moister as you get further through the layers) you also need to strip off the fine but tenacious corn silk. It wedges itself between the kernels and it takes skilled and patient hands to strip it off.
Once you get your corn shucked, you boil it. How long you boil the ears is a matter of personal taste, though we prefer ours to be tender but still crisp.
How you dress your corn is also a matter of much contention. I prefer to slather on butter and salt and savor the sweetness of the corn with the savory butter and salt. It's not really an ear of corn until the butter is dripping off your chin and elbows, IMO.
In corn season we tend to eat sweet corn as our vegetable 3-4 nights a week. It sounds excessive but to me sweet corn -- REAL sweet corn -- is one of the last few truly seasonal foods. Our modern food supply chain can keep us in apples and oranges and avocados year round. I challenge you to find sweet corn in December. As a Thanksgiving and Christmas treat, we always cook some extra ears of corn in the summer. We cut off the kernels of these extra ears and freeze them. This sweet corn off-the-cob becomes a treasured side-dish of family meals throughout the winter.
One of my fondest family memories centers around sweet corn. When I was little, my great grandfather had an acre or two of land not far from here. He would pay the farmer to seed it with sweet corn each season. Then, every August or so, he, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, my aunt and anyone else in the family who was able would drive up to the patch. Mom-mom and Pop-pop would dole out bushel baskets to all of us, and we'd go up and down the rows picking the ears that were ready, hauling out bushel baskets out to the cars and dumping the ears into the trunks. This is how I learned that the leaves of corn stalks are razor sharp. Once we'de denuded the field of all the ripe ears, we'd drive back to my grandmother's house. Somehow more people would always show up and we'd pull all the lawn furniture in a ring and shuck the majority of the corn. Dodging bees was compulsory. Then the party would move inside for the boiling, icing, cutting and bagging process which is just what it sounds like. The ears were boiled until done then dumped in ice water to cool. Then the kernels were cut off and bagged into quart bags and frozen. At the end of the day each participant got an allotment of fresh ears and frozen bags of corn to take home. I remember our basement freezer having an entire shelf of nothing but bags of fresh frozen sweet corn.
Mom-mom, Pop-pop, the great aunts and the patch are long gone. But every time I roll an ear of corn in butter, salt it all around and take a bit of sweet summer I remember all those times and more.
rhivolution's answers instead of mine. Since I don't feel like spending an hour+ to recreate my witty and incredibly intelligent and insightful post (ha!), I want to instead write briefly about something I love. It's August in Pennsylvania, and to me that means only one thing: It's sweet corn season. Now, to be fair, thanks to the efforts of Florida and later Lancaster county, we've been eating fresh sweet corn since May or June. But starting in July and August the really good local sweet corn starts to come in. We have two local dairy farms around here who plant people corn in addition to their cattle feed corn. There are also lots of little mom-and-pop stands that still sell on the roadside honor system as well as some large farms that ship their sweet corn to the local places around here for sale.
Sweet corn season for me is the height of summer. You bring your prize home from the local farm store -- silver queen or mixed, it's a personal preference, really. You sit outside to shuck it, fighting gnats, mosquitos and bees who tend to swarm you while you're engaged in this activity. For those of you who've never shucked an ear of corn, it's an art form. Not only do you have to peel off the rough green husk (which gets progressively softer and moister as you get further through the layers) you also need to strip off the fine but tenacious corn silk. It wedges itself between the kernels and it takes skilled and patient hands to strip it off.
Once you get your corn shucked, you boil it. How long you boil the ears is a matter of personal taste, though we prefer ours to be tender but still crisp.
How you dress your corn is also a matter of much contention. I prefer to slather on butter and salt and savor the sweetness of the corn with the savory butter and salt. It's not really an ear of corn until the butter is dripping off your chin and elbows, IMO.
In corn season we tend to eat sweet corn as our vegetable 3-4 nights a week. It sounds excessive but to me sweet corn -- REAL sweet corn -- is one of the last few truly seasonal foods. Our modern food supply chain can keep us in apples and oranges and avocados year round. I challenge you to find sweet corn in December. As a Thanksgiving and Christmas treat, we always cook some extra ears of corn in the summer. We cut off the kernels of these extra ears and freeze them. This sweet corn off-the-cob becomes a treasured side-dish of family meals throughout the winter.
One of my fondest family memories centers around sweet corn. When I was little, my great grandfather had an acre or two of land not far from here. He would pay the farmer to seed it with sweet corn each season. Then, every August or so, he, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, my aunt and anyone else in the family who was able would drive up to the patch. Mom-mom and Pop-pop would dole out bushel baskets to all of us, and we'd go up and down the rows picking the ears that were ready, hauling out bushel baskets out to the cars and dumping the ears into the trunks. This is how I learned that the leaves of corn stalks are razor sharp. Once we'de denuded the field of all the ripe ears, we'd drive back to my grandmother's house. Somehow more people would always show up and we'd pull all the lawn furniture in a ring and shuck the majority of the corn. Dodging bees was compulsory. Then the party would move inside for the boiling, icing, cutting and bagging process which is just what it sounds like. The ears were boiled until done then dumped in ice water to cool. Then the kernels were cut off and bagged into quart bags and frozen. At the end of the day each participant got an allotment of fresh ears and frozen bags of corn to take home. I remember our basement freezer having an entire shelf of nothing but bags of fresh frozen sweet corn.
Mom-mom, Pop-pop, the great aunts and the patch are long gone. But every time I roll an ear of corn in butter, salt it all around and take a bit of sweet summer I remember all those times and more.
Hey Out There
Tue, Aug. 18th, 2009 12:26 amDear brain,
You have to give me something to work with here. You can't just keep throwing me things like, "flash horror fiction!" or "The Elfhome Chronicles!" and expect me to be able to run with it. I am rusty and I need some characters or dialog snippets or plot bits or SOMETHING.
This used to be so easy, like water flowing to the sea. *sigh*
Argh.
You have to give me something to work with here. You can't just keep throwing me things like, "flash horror fiction!" or "The Elfhome Chronicles!" and expect me to be able to run with it. I am rusty and I need some characters or dialog snippets or plot bits or SOMETHING.
This used to be so easy, like water flowing to the sea. *sigh*
Argh.
