When Your Wife Was Raised as an Iowa Farm Girl....

My beloved and I were at the grocery store yesterday. In the produce section. Where he spotted sweet corn. Corn with husks that were already beginning to dry. You must understand that I was raised on an Iowa farm and I know what genuine Iowa sweet corn tastes like when picked, husked and dropped into simmering water within ten minutes of the picking. We're Talking Sweet Corn!

I argued with my beloved that this corn had to be days old! Look! The husks are starting to dry! The sugar has turned to starch! It will not be sweet! The kernels will be tough!

Every Iowa farm girl knows that Sweet Corn is best when picked and cooked and eaten all within ten minutes of the picking. Or at least within the half-day and not days down the road. Every Iowa farm girl knows this! And every Iowa farm girl knows that you may as well forgo store-bought corn and wait until July when the early corn will be available -- either in your own garden or by some Iowa farm boy down on Main Street selling sweet corn from the back of his pickup...corn he picked early that morning.

But my beloved insisted. (You have to realize that he is a California boy and doesn't understand all of the above.)

So we walked out of there with two large ears of corn. (I wouldn't let him buy more! Two large ears make us four servings!) They rested in the fridge overnight and this noon I shucked (now There's an Iowa word!) them and dropped them into a pot of boiling water. I have to admit they were tasty. Not Sweet Corn by any means, but at least tasty enough to be called Sweet Enough Corn.

I had to eat my words...er, my corn.