I'm always dumbfounded at the way people defile corn in the process of buying it, stripping bare one ear after another and tossing them heartlessly back on the pile. To tell you the truth, I'm not entirely sure what it is they're looking for...and I've become convinced that – in most cases – they don't either. Just that, like everything else in their lives, there must be a better one somewhere.
Back when I was still doing the farmer's market, I was chatting with a fellow vendor one morning, a woman and a farmer I respect and admire (once I got over being terrified of her fierce demeanor) and like a lot. She'd wandered over to my booth during the slow early hour of the market. She kept a keen eye on her stall as we talked, and suddenly she took off at a sprint mid-sentence, hollering across the green 'Hey! hey! What are you doing? Stop it, stop that!!!'. There in her stall, some jackass was rifling through her bushels of corn, stripping the husks, tossing them back...I was almost as pissed as she was, and when I got home, I sat and wrote up a post for my previous blog – A Cooking Life – to try and rehabilitate the Corn Molesters. Chances are, the people that really needed to read it never did, but those sympathetic to the cause have suggested it should be printed out and posted everywhere corn is sold. And during this high corn season (here in Vermont, the sweet corn has been spectacular, even while it withers and dies elsewhere around the country), I think it bears repeating.
Continue reading "Buying Corn: A Public Service Announcement" »