Sunday, July 18, 2010

Freezing Sweet Corn Family Style

Mom and Dad have a grand set up for preparing sweet corn for freezing. Mom has it all stored in memory from previous years, along with suggestions on how to improve it this year.Dad usually follows instruction pretty well but on occasion disagrees. (Now you know where I learned the fine art of finger pointing. I got it from both of them.)Saturday we had a multi-generational gathering to process 25 dozen ears of corn. (Dad didn't know it but we had a birthday lunch prepared for him, too.) They cranked out the awning and set up the fan. Husks went right onto the truck bed for easy unloading later.
Dad divided the corn into boxes so we knew whose corn was being processed. I thought the corn was very nice. We purchased it from the Ebys on Feaster Road. After husking comes the final silk removal. This is Dad's drill strapped to a bench with a brush in place of a drill bit. It's noisy. I wore my ear plugs. Dave lent us his turkey cooker. It has a basket for easy ear removal. We cooked 2 dozen ears at a time. Then onto the two coolers set up with ice water.
Then the cutting, bagging and freezing happen.
At noon we had a lunch of hot dogs, barbeque, sweet corn (of course), watermelon, lemonade, birthday cake and ice cream. Afterward was time for story telling and cat naps.Kaden rescued the few worms we found and loaded them onto his truck for a ride around the patio. Madison loved playing with the garden hose.