"August is the year at early harvest,a farm wife with a baby napping in the crib,
a preserving kettle on the stove,
fryers in the freezer, new potatoes in the pot,
and a husband in the hayfield baling the second cutting.
August is tomatoes ripening
and the insistent note of the cicada punctuating the
heat of midafternoon.
August is the smell of corn pollen,
and the taste of roasting ears,
and the stain of blackberry juice on the fingers....
August is Summer thinking of the cut and color
of her Autumn costume."
Hal Borland
in Sundial of the Seasons
from The New York Times
Hal Borland was a friend of Gladys Taber's and, incidentally, uncle to a friend of ours. Every morning after I read The Mockingbird Devotional, I pick up Sundial of the Seasons and read the day's entry. The first one of each month is my favorite.
You would think I'm star struck and Hal Borland's most fanatic groupie if I told you how much I love him and his books, his mind, his dogs, his wife, anything connected to this man. But I think Gladys Taber felt that way about him too so I guess I'm okay.
I left out three paragraphs of his August 1 essay and each line stirred my heart. But I'm thinking of corn right now. I know, it's GMO today unless you're lucky enough to find some locally grown that isn't. And that sells super fast!
But as someone who was a picky eater as a child--I can't even believe that was ever me--fresh corn was something I turned my nose up on. Canned corn I would eat but not corn on cob, not Mama's good fried corn. As a young married woman who then did the cooking in the house, I quickly learned to appreciate corn in all its good forms.
And oh my, I just remembered the amazing corn relish I used to make every summer. I just can't do canning and pickling anymore but that recipe, and the ones for pepper relish and chili sauce, were too good to be lost. (Note to self: type the recipes in a post soon where maybe someday a grandchild will want to make them.)
Anyhow, I'm just now making up for my years without fresh corn. I don't let the summer go by without cutting off a bowl full of it to make Mama's fried corn, although it won't taste as good as hers did. Not even when I do exactly as she did...
First cut just the tips off.
Next cut off the rest of the kernels.
Go back with the knife blade and scrape the rest.
That's what makes the best fried (creamed) corn ever! And if you add fried okra (a chopped green tomato added), sliced homegrown tomatoes and a wedge of watermelon to your meal, then you have one fine supper.
But most of the summer, from the time when the first Florida corn appears in the store all the way to fall, I fix three ears of corn on the cob for our supper a couple of times a week. I bring the unsalted water to a boil, put in the corn, bring it back to a boil and cook it four minutes. And then you eat it, you don't let it sit around waiting for you.
Ideally, you're supposed to do as Mr. Borland suggests and have your pot of water boiling, rush to the garden and pluck the ears, shucking it as you run, plop it in the pot, "watch it like a hawk, dash it to the table."
Daddy never had to grow corn in his garden when I was a child since he was produce buyer for Kroger stores but I remember hot July and August mornings when my sister Deb and I would go with him to one of his growers' fields.
I liked walking through cornfields as a child, most of the time it was a field close to the old Sulphur Dell ballpark in Nashville. Daddy would pick a bushel or two and then we would go home and sit on the patio shucking all that corn.
I hated that. There were vicious worms in some, you never knew which ear it would be in. And I didn't even have the consolation of looking forward to eating it, for goodness' sake!
As often as I could get away with it I lingered inside the kitchen with Mama when I'd take some in for her to blanch for freezing. It was air conditioned in there--God bless the man who invented air conditioning.
And God, please yank a knot in the tail of the man (and company) who invented GMO foods.
Thank You, I appreciate that.
