Corn Corn and More Corn

Have I ever told you how much I love fresh corn?  No?

I LOVE FRESH CORN.

Mmmm.  The crisp, juicy sweetness that is a fresh corn cob.  Slathered with butter, sprinkled with salt and pepper.  Oh my, oh my.  Lunch.  Dinner.  Afternoon tea.  Whenever the time of day, it's delicious.  Munchkin is already well initiated into the rites of sweet corn on the cob.  He can munch his way happily through half a cob and still do justice to the rest of his dinner.  Boyo isn't quite so keen, he doesn't like the bits in his teeth.  I've tried teaching him my high-level corn-cob-eating technique that results in very little corn-in-teeth.  But he hasn't got it.  Oh well, we all still like corn regardless.

But I've always found it a bit hard to manage technically.  How do you take a humongous cob of corn and cut it into something more manageable?  I used to avoid the issue.  Serve up a whole cob each.  Boyo had no issues.  His would disappear along with whatever else was for dinner.  But I'd either eat my corn and not have room for anything else, or eat the rest and be uninterested in my corn.  Such a waste.

But when I tried to cut them, my frustration levels were almost unbearable.

Last summer, Mum came to my rescue.  It's really very easy to cut corn she tells me. I am a little skeptical.  But interested enough to listen.  The trick is to get the knife right into that cob.  Here I'd been wrestling and wrangling my corn cobs nearly to death trying to cut them.  There'd be mushed corn all over the place before I finally came away triumphant with a bit of corn in each hand.  Way easy, says Mum.  Use a nice sharp knife.  Check.  My big one is best for that.  Good strong tip, nice maneuverability, and sharp to boot.  Stab that cob.  Right down deep.  Now wriggle the knife around a bit, gradually cutting through the cob.  You don't have to go all the way around.  Just a little, till there's enough movement to give a little twist of the knife blade and wa-lah, two bits of very neatly cut corn.  Very few splatters of mangled corn.  Very little effort.  Very little frustration.  Quick and easy.  Ah.  I am now a very happy corn-cob-eating girl.   Now,  if I could just find a bit more room in my already over-full freezer, I'd be cutting corn by the bucket load to freeze.  We did that in Townsville - it comes up so much nicer than the store-bought frozen cobs.  But alas, my freezer is full.  As it contains a whole lot of blueberries, I probably shouldn't complain.  Instead, we might just eat some more corn for dinner tonight.  Yum, yum, yummy.

Have you enjoyed some fresh corn this summer?

Amy