Remember the scene where Jack is cutting up an ear of corn into a pot of water? He look up and here comes Ennis with them horses and his kreel case, price tag still on it after five years. They are so happy in the scene.
My partner called me at lunch Friday and told me Southern States had fresh corn. Ah hell, its summertime.
The actual reason for the call was to acertain if I could EAT corn. I can't eat popcorn. That's another story. I have no problem eating corn. I enjoy a food that the body obviously has no use for.
We both came up eating corn on the cob. A lot of time we had it boiled, the ears shucked and cleaned of all the silk.
My Mamma told me once that in the days of slavery the white people ate the yellow corn and left the white corn to the slaves. The moral of the story being the white corn was actually better for you, to which I have no research. All I know about corn, I have stated above.
Now we rememoried the reunions, the fish frys, the midsummer parties of our parents, the ears of corn roasted on coals, sometimes after roasting a pig for 24 hours. Sometimes in Aluminun foil, often as not just in the shuck.
"Those Northern Europeans didn't know about corn" I told him. "That's what come from the Indians". We smiled and tosted in recognition, something from our raisin' had transfered from "what we knew to what we believed". We had been taught "we", being largely white people, learned about corn from the Indians. Now "we" has come to include the Indian ancestors my family would not talk about for years. We didn't so much learn it as we inherited it.
But as for the corn, I like to rub it in butter and spice it with mint pepper and wrap it back up in the shuck and roast it on the gas grill on low 5-10 minutes. Corn don't give us much, but it is a good delivery system for flavor. We tore into those ears of corn like we hadn't ate in a month, thankful for the bounty, and the teeth to eat it with.
And then, we also had the first tomato of the season. I only eat home grown tomatos. There are indeed only two things that money can but, that's true love and home grown tomatos. Plus Dan Quayle would have a hard time with them. I especially love Yellow Tomatos, but enough of that.