Corn!!!

I went to my favorite open air fruit/veggie stand yesterday to pick up a few items and was shocked to my core when I saw the price on the yellow corn. It was .89 cents EACH!!!! Yes, you heard me correctly. 89 cents a piece, this vegetable that we normally get 10 for a buck...was now almost a buck a piece. I was just stunned.

My good long time buddy Bill (more on Bill in another blog sometime to come) manages the veggie stand and I asked him how come our corn was so expensive. He told me because so much corn is being used for Ethanol to run our cars and the other use for corn is to make corn syrup...the number one food ingredient in most every processed food product. That made perfect sense to me, the reason Americans are getting so freaking fat...Corn Syrup, Fructose, Glucose, Sucrose...it all spells out one thing...SUGAR!!!

Driving home I was reminiscing about a trip I had taken a long time ago, across this beautiful country, with my then best friend Sandy (aka Sam II....that's another story...stay tuned)we were driving from Washington clear across the continent to Maryland. It was a long, amazingly fun trip. We kept a verbal journal by talking into my hand held tape recorder.

One entire cassette, both sides, was on the topic "CORN". While driving those 3000+ miles, we saw alot of things but the number one thing we saw was field after field of corn. Millions and billions of ears of corn. We saw corn TPs, corn buildings, there was a house that was decorated entirely with corn husks and kernels. There were children of the corn....NO...seriously...they sat at a little booth and the sign said 'Children of the Corn". We laughed so hard I almost drove the truck off of the road.

We started to free flow and talk about corn. We were laughing ourselves sick. I came up with the "Corn Creed". It claimed that there was so much corn in this country that every man, woman and child should be given certificate at birth stating that they would never have to pay one single dime for corn. We should be given all the corn our little hearts desired from the time we were born, until the time we closed our eyes for the lst time. Hell, if we wanted a corn coffin, it should be given without any resistance.

Field after field, acre after acre, mile after mile of solid, golden, silk crowned corn. It seemed ridiculous that we, as Americans, should get all the corn we wanted. I know that our Native Americans were the ones who gave us the secret to growing, harvesting and using this miracle product. It is just astounding how many uses there are for this wonder fruit..yes I said "Fruit" because it is. Botanically speaking, corn is a caryopsis, or dry fruit - popularly known as a grain. I think most people think of corn as a vegetable but I just set y'all straight. Look it up if ya don't believe me.

One thing I do know and that is that I love corn. On the cob, popped, buttered, canned, creamed (yep, in a casserole I make it is really delicious) kettled, tortilla-ed,or dogged. MMMmmmm good. Slathered in butter and eaten right off the cob is my personal favorite method. Corn is the most delicious summer food I can think of. It is right up there with Watermelon. I have many great memories when I think of corn. One is how my mother ate it. God bless her...she used a fork. Yep, she would slide the tongs under two or three rows and then twist her fork so as to dislodge the kernels from where they are attached, leaving her a fork full of corn kernels. Yumm...one time, for a punishment; she made me eat my entire ear of corn this way. She made it look very because when I tried it, it was very hard to do and it took me the entire dinner time to comlete one ear.

My very best memory is going to Teddy Bear Cove in Bellingham, Washington. It is the infamous nude beach and on Sunday's the locals would have these amazing pot luck dinners. Everyone brought their contribution and there were a couple of crab pots left down there that we baited and set out, to be reeled back to the surface jammed packed with fresh, beautiful Dungeness crab. Someone always brought a big huge pound or two of butter and it was melted in a coffee can over the open fire. We all took turns filling up our little plastic cups with it so we could dunk our clumps of crab meat into and then shove into our waiting mouths with our fingers...the melted butter dripping down our naked bodies. Oh man, that a feeling to have melted butter run down your naked chest...it is so sensual and indescribable.

There are no words to describe what devouring good food while being naked feels like. It is a little slice of heaven for sure. No napkins, no forks, no table manners used and no one judging you or telling you to take your elbows off the table or put your napkin in your lap. It is as natural and beautiful as it gets. This is how our ancestors consumed their meals....right out in the open.

The Natives that lived on the coast of Washington must have been the luckiest of all. I can only imagine what it must have been like to live in such an amazingly beautiful place. To be able to dive into this beautiful(and very cold) body of water and pull out your next meal..how absolutely awesome it must have been.

Ooops, I did it again, I completely derailed my train of thought again. Back to the subject....There is more corn in this country than you can wrap your head around, trust that. They say for every pound of beef, it takes 10 acres of land to provide the food for one cow...wow....that's astounding and scary. It is almost enough to make me want to stop eating beef all together. That would be so hard, I love my Porterhouses but I think I could learn to live without....but that's a whole other blog topic all together. Have a wonderful weekend. Go get yourself some corn and have a great big barbecue...Mmmmm, finger lickin good!!