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When I was a child, vegetables seemed much more interactive than they are now. Even if we didn’t eat the vegetables that came directly from our garden, my mother bought fresh vegetables from farm stands, which were plucked, picked or harvested directly from someone else’s garden. For the most part, these vegetables were sold in big bins wherein consumers would fill up their baggies or baskets, have them weighed, and take them home to use in the evening meal. I can still remember strategically searching for just the “right” green bean that would make the scale tilt perfectly to a whole number. And when we got home, my mother always doled out the vegetable prep instructions fairly, making sure to rotate the duties of peeling, washing, destemming and shucking equally amongst myself and three sisters. Snipping the stems off the green beans was the most tedious because my mother insisted that the stem be removed with as little waste to the flesh of the green bean as was possible. Peeling carrots was sort of fun but required a tool which was sharp and, thus, had an imposed minimum age requirement. Conversely, shucking the corn was always the most desired activity because this was always done with a teammate and ALWAYS outside, away from a critiquing eye...
As anyone who has ever shucked corn can attest to, there is a real skill required in getting a (mostly) corn silk (hair) free, small-stemmed ear of corn that fits perfectly in the pot. Leaving the stem too long or too short results in uneven cooking and difficult eating, respectively. But leaving too much hair on the corn, results in being reprimanded and shamed by the corn eaters. In my family, the amount of hair which remained on the corn was always indicative of who did the shucking. My father was the messiest and hairiest corn shucker and my mother was the cleanest (duh!) so my sister’s and I always vied for the coveted #2 spot.
Fast forward to today, and I still enjoy a good corn shucking, self-imposed challenge. However, since my husband doesn’t seem to mind at all if there are hairs on his corn, I now challenge myself to see if I can leave behind as few hairs as possible… on my kitchen floor. As a result, I always shuck my corn INSIDE wherein I stand over the garbage tucked underneath my kitchen island. I usually peel back a few layers before appropriately breaking off the better part of the stem and discard it, along with most of the husk and hair, directly into the trash. However, despite my best and most tidy efforts, some of the hairs I then carefully pick off, always seem to land in various places around the kitchen or even on me, which then later fall off in random places that I discover only after stepping on it with my bare feet. It has been two days since I shucked 4 ears of corn and …
Three! Three!
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!
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