“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 863 (Tuesday) – corn

Having bought corn on Sunday and then promptly forgetting I bought corn as soon I was home, I got around to the shucking and cooking on Monday. The five ears had been strategically placed in the refrigerator for maximum visibility when retrieving Winston’s insulin after work. It was successful.

All five ears were cleaned and cooked because it felt easier to deal with the floss and mess once. It reminded me of countless summer weekend dinners at Mummu’s. I would remove the husks and the floss and put it in a paper grocery sack. Mummu would rinse the corn and cook it in a big kettle.

When we ate corn on the cob at Mummu’s, it was never served on the plate with the meat and potato. And there was always meat and potato. Every dinner at Mummu’s included a meat, some variety of potato, a vegetable, slice of bread with butter, and a glass of milk. When the vegetable was corn on the cob, there was a ritual. The meat and potato were eaten. Plates were rinsed. Then the corn was served on the freshly rinsed plates, where it was slathered in butter and salted. It always seemed that the corn was so special that it was its own entire course.

Corn on its own platter.

We were not fancy people. We did not use the little corn holders. We held our scalding hot corn cobs with bare hands, and if our fingers burned, so be it. It was part of the thrill.

Growing up, I was aware of three kinds of corn – Butter and Sugar corn on the cob, canned corn, and Green Giant frozen niblets corn in butter sauce that came in a bag that was boiled in water and served only on holidays. Canned corn was boring, fresh corn on the cob was delicious, and the frozen niblets could regularly start a war at the holiday dinner table if one kid thought they got fewer niblets than another. Being the only vegetable my brother would eat, Mummu eventually bought him his own package of niblets for Thanksgiving dinners at her house.

I was a fully grown adult before knowing that ears of corn came in different varieties. Silver Queen? Peaches and Cream? Oh my. All delicious.

Monday and Tuesday, fresh corn was not the special highlight of the supper meal, it was the entire meal. It sat on a plate, uncrowded by other elements of the meal, like corn at Mummu’s, and also liberated of the burden of following the opening act of mandatory meat and potato. It’s great to be an adult, able to eat whatever I like whenever I feel like it.