2023, Family, Food, Mysteries

A Bit Corny

59 Comments

YA made popcorn on Sunday.  She always dumps it into one of our big yellow bowls which she carries around with her until she is finished.  Most of the time she brings the bowl into my room and offers me some.

On Sunday, she was shaking the bowl as she picked out a few pieces for me and the sound made me think she had a lot of un-popped kernels.  I asked her if she had a lot of old maids and she looked at me as if I had frogs jumping out of my ears. 

She did not know that the un-popped corns were called old maids.  In fact, upon further discussion it turns out that she also did not know that old maid was a derogatory term used for unmarried women.  While it’s probably a good thing that old maids is fading from our consciousness, it took me by surprise.  There is so much that I consider common knowledge that just isn’t anymore.

How do you like your corn?  Air-popped, kettle, plain or buttered?  Creamed?

59 thoughts on “A Bit Corny”

  2. When I was a teenager, I had friends who worked at a Green Giant plant canning corn in the summer when the corn was ripe. After their experience canning creamed corn, none of them would come anywhere near it as a comestible.

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      1. I think Barb Adams was the baboon with goats. They have since retired and moved to Duluth, sans goats. Cynthia has all kinds of other critters, as I recall, Including a horse and a very large dog.

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        3. Barb Adams and I became friends after meeting each other on this blog. I may not have had goats then but had them before and have had them since.  Cynthia “Life is a shifting carpet…learn to dance.”

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  5. At first I read the question as “How do you like your popcorn?”, and I was trying to imagine creamed popcorn… I still most like popcorn from the pan with butter and a little brewers yeast… we used to have it with thyme too, which it just didn’t need.

    Regular corn – my favorite is still my grandma’s Scalloped Corn, which I take to potlucks on occasion. Recipe has saltine cracker crumbs.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    This is a rare, fond memory for me. My mom used to pop popcorn in bacon grease,then butter it generously. This was served with crisp apples on Sunday evenings during Walt Disney hour. On Monday morning grandpa would eat it with milk and sugar for breakfast like cereal. The popcorn was a high quality popcorn gleaned, then laboriously shelled by us, from Popcorn Smith’s field (owner of Jolly Time popcorn).

    Sweet corn? Nothing creamed, to be sure. A cob of grilled corn slathered in butter. Real butter. Salt and pepper. Early August. Nothing like it.

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  7. We would get sweet corn from my Uncle Alvin, and mom would boil it up and my dad and I would dive in. Mom called us Iowa porkers as we slathered on the butter and devoured the corn.

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  9. I haven’t had creamed or scalloped corn in decades; my mom made good scalloped corn, but I don’t think I’m motivated to dig out her recipe, much less try to veganize it. Roasted corn at the State Fair is an inviolable tradition and my favorite way to eat corn. We make popcorn on Saturday evenings to eat while watching “Svengoolie”, in a pot on the stove (just the way Mom used to do it). Roommate likes it with just butter, I put lemon pepper and nutritional yeast on mine. My friend who died last month used to make Jiffy Pop when we had movie nights at their place, which was fun, but roommate and I agreed that the old copper-bottomed pot does just as good a job at home.

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    1. Jiffy Pop was a huge treat when I was a kid; normally my mom made the popcorn on the stove and JP was too much money back then.

      I do remember the time my dad decided to make popcorn on his own. He didn’t realize you needed to have a lid on the pan. We needed a ladder to get the greasy spots off the kitchen ceiling!

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  10. Kettle corn for me, or caramel corn if I really want a sugar high. I eat popcorn after golf because it’s free at the course, even though it’s not very good. Too salty; funky chemical flavor. Movie popcorn is usually good–don’t need butter on it although I wouldn’t turn it down if it had butter.

    Wife and I have found that Act II popcorn is pretty good. Just a hint of sweetness with the salty, no butter. Addictive.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  12. Kelly does air popped with some added butter.
    I like microwave w/ the extra seasoning added. And butter.
    It’s interesting, even different movie theaters make it different. Some taste better than others. We have the bucket, so it’s $4 plus a free refill. I still got a couple quart bags in the freezer.

    (Way back in the 1970’s, when I was in the hospital for weeks after I first hurt my leg, mom would bring me popcorn in used wonder bread bags).

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    2. Listening to that song made me realize just what a huge part of American life corn is. I know various baboons have talked about summer jobs that involved detasseling corn. Yet another American experience absent from my life.

      Unlike my parents, who both thought of corn as something you feed to pigs, I do love corn on the cob. Fresh from the farmer’s market in the summer. microwaved, and slathered in butter, with a grilled burger. Welcome to America.

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      2. Oh PJ, you just triggered a memory for me. When I was a junior in high school, I had an American Field Service student/brother from France. I think he had been at the house for a week when we decided to barbecue hamburgers and do corn. You should have seen the look on his face because the idea that we would eat corn right off of the cob was abhorrent to him. He said the same thing you did…only pigs eat corn on the cob. We turned him completely around on this before the year was out.

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        1. Fortunately my parents’ visit lasted “only” a month, and we didn’t manage to change their mind about eating corn or anything else. I’ll admit that we were not off to an auspicious start when for their first dinner in America we served barbequed ribs – which Hans managed to thoroughly scorch by catching them on fire repeatedly – with grilled fresh corn on the cob. Corn on the cob isn’t easy to eat if you have poorly fitting dentures, which they both had, but which I wasn’t aware of until that night.

          They came to America determined to hate it, and did absolutely nothing but find fault with everything the entire month. Somehow it was all my fault, too. It was possibly the longest month of my life. I can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t very funny at the time.

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  14. I’m just not a fan of popcorn. I can eat it with lots of butter and salt but I would rather eat something else. I’ve had it with nutritional yeast and that’s good too but I’d still rather have something else.

    I like the ear of corn roasted on the grill in the husk. So yummy. I’m learning to eat it without slathering it with Hope Creamery butter, but it’s not nearly as good. Salt too. Lots of salt.

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  15. YA and I always do corn at least once at the Fair (OK, usually more than once). It is SO hard to wait for it to cool down enough to eat it…

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  16. I got one of those big glass globes to pop regular popcorn in the microwave. I like it lightly buttered and heavily salted. When we retired from Taiwan 5 years ago, we left the air popper behind. I like the light butter thing that I’m able to do now.

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