Food memories...

During the summer, a lot of my friends go nuts over watermelon. I like it too, but if I eat too much, my stomach gets pretty serious pains. I've never been able to tell why, exactly. Cantaloupe and other melons can too, so I assume it's some sort of mild food disagreement, that isn't quite a true allergy.

Instead, during the summer, what I get crazy about is corn on the cob or dark cherries. This year, it's definitely been corn on the cob. I adore fresh picked. I like yellow, white, and the sweet varieties. I love drowning it in butter and just a bit of salt. I even love eating it directly off the cob, although I hate picking bits out of my teeth later. I like to smell it in the kitchen when I'm boiling it. I even like it roasted on a grill. I like feeling the kernels pop in my mouth and tasting the salty, sweet, buttery goodness.

It reminds me of when I was little, and dad was an associate dean of arts and sciences, and their office was adjacent to the Ag building. One of the professors there spread word that they'd had a much better crop of corn out of their students than they'd planned for. As a result, there was way more corn than the students and professors wanted. If we wanted to drive out to the fields, we could have as much as we could pick.

Mom told us "One paper bag full, that's all we need!" but I know we took more grocery bags out than one, and I know we came home with a lot. She was parboiling for hours that night, then bagging and putting them in the big deep freeze we had in the garage. We had corn on the cob, it seemed, all winter long. That meant we could have it with Thanksgiving dinner AND Christmas dinner. It was so much fun, and it was some of the best corn I've ever had in my life.

I don't know if I always loved corn that much, but I can definitely trace some of my current love back to that summer. So it's tied to my dad, and my mom in the kitchen, more or less permanently.

Great memories.

(cross posted from http://crescentdreams.dreamwidth.org - if you're interested in a journal there, ask - I still have invite codes at time of this post)