Southern Cooking

I have always had this glamorous image of myself planting a fruitful, bountiful garden.  Sewing the seed, gracefully turning the dirt and picking the harvest.  But as you may or may not know, my fiance has dubbed me as "city" along with a few other nicknames.  Although I did grow up a southerner, lover of the outdoors, I did not get the proper up-bringing for growing a crop as my farm friendly fiance, Nathan.  He, however, grew up on a farm, planting a real garden and churning out some serious manual labor for that bountiful outcome.  Since my farming skills are lacking and we do live in an apartment (aka no grass included) I shall stick to the farmers markets and/or street side truck beds filled with fresh fruits and veggies to conjure up any new recipes that I might stumble upon.

With all that said, on Memorial Day, Nathan and I took a drive in Starkville and I had repeatedly spotted an Amish couple on the side of the road. The banner that hung from there truck read "sweet corn." OK people, I am a sucker for fresh sweet corn on the cob."  After much persuasion, Nathan pulled along the side of the road so I could purchase some of that sweet, golden goodness.  At $4.00 a pop, I got a huge wal-mart sack full.  WOW...YIPEE....now what are Nathan & I going to do with a dozen ears of corn?

What to do, what to do???  I tell you what we are going to do, what any other Mississippi woman would do.....we are going to freeze it and put it up for later!

Not knowing how to freeze any kind of fresh vegetable, I hop right on to Google to do a little research.

Step one: 

Blanch the corn.   Blanch? What the heck is blanch?  BOIL the corn for 4-7 minutes, depending on    how many ears you are boiling or how big they are.

Step two:

Cool the corn.  Dump all the boiled corn in a cold water bath (use ice). Soak for the same amount of time you boiled the corn.

Step three:

Cut the corn off of the cob. Yes, cut each little kernel off the cob.  Apparently, if you leave the corn on the cob for an extended amount of time the corn starts tasting "cobby."  Who knew!?

Step four:

Store the corn in freezer bags, be sure to get all of the air out of each bag. Several articles recommended a food saver which produces vacuum sealed bags, come on now, what 24 year person has one of those?  Not me, so I invented the whole straw method.  Your going to laugh out loud, but it really works! 

Straw method:   

Bag your corn.  Place a straw in corner of the bag.  Seal closer of bag until you reach the straw.  Suck all the air out of the bag using the straw.  Pinch straw closed and seal bag shut.

A little redneck but it works. :)

After "putting-up" all of that corn, I felt a sense of southern success come over me.  There is just something about doing things the old way as to the new.


More fun to come :)