Dont be CORN fused

Feel a little bit like I am cramming for my Amish Homemaking final....and the Buckeyes and the Browns are not helping at all! Corn was a 'surprise' project. I had actually gone to the farmers market to buy more tomatoes, to finish the previous post. They were not quite as red or quite as beautiful as they were at the other spot...but this particular location was having a special on quantities of corn. The darling salesgirls knew a live one when they saw one (in church clothes). Did I want them to shuck the corn, too? Wow! The hardest part was now history, for the low, low price of 10 cents an ear, times 5 1/2 dozen ears.

So, with a(nother) false sense of kitchen confidence, I set the water to boiling and laid out the supplies. This is Lee's old kettle from the campground...it is big enough to hold all the Browns dropped passes. (But we're not bitter) I put in about a dozen ears at a time for just a minute or two, this is called 'blanching'. Using tongs, remove each ear and hold it over the kettle to drain, then lay the ears on an immaculately clean kitchen towel. By the time the last one came out, the first one had cooled enough to handle. I held them vertically, tip side down. Then I vertically cut several rows of kernels off at a time with a cheap steak knife, right onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Dont use your good knives here.....they will cut way too deeply into the cob. Cheaper knives work much better for this application.

After cutting the kernels from (about) four ears, I gathered up the edges of the parchment paper, just as you would a pastry bag, and gently shook them from the parchment paper into the ziploc bag. Then just squeeze out the air from the bottom up, and lay flat to cool.