King Corn

Just a little while ago, Josh and Treat were shucking corn on the front porch. The coals were almost ready for the ribs and burgers when they delivered their handiwork to the kitchen and I crossed my fingers that it would be good corn, tender and sweet.

In my mind, few things go together as well as corn and summer. I remember when eating a whole ear was too hard and all I wanted was for my mom to cut the kernels off. Then I lost my front teeth and I had to eat it that way, and I couldn't wait to get back to the cob.

I remember how cleanly both my mom and my best friend, Nicci, were able to eat their corn off the cob. There was not a single ragged bit of kernel left on their ears. It was like they had a corn vacuum or something.

I remember when my brother lost his tooth while eating corn. We watched in fascination as my mom plucked it from the bloody cob like an errant kernel injured in battle. Then, a few days later, it happened again.

I remember the first summer visit we made to Heidi's family. One of the big events they had planned was a trip to the Eden Corn Festival. A county or two south of them, this event was like a fair or a carnival; it had rides and games and plenty of concessions, but their tradition was to eat corn, and only corn, for dinner.

I was very skeptical of their plan as we approached the corn tent. Volunteers sliced open big burlap bags full of local ears waiting to be shucked. Huge propane fired steam kettles simmered in the back, and the only thing on the menu was corn. "How many should we start with?" Heidi's dad asked, "Two or three?"

He meant dozen, of course, and although the six of us started with two, we easily polished off three and made a good sized dent in the fourth. That corn was probably the best I have ever had-- doused in salt and butter, each sweet kernel practically melted in my mouth, and I learned that night that corn can indeed make a mighty fine meal.

Oh yeah?

Don't make me and my best friend jump into a giant robot suit and smack you down!

We saw Pacific Rim today, can you tell?

Happy Summer

One of the perks of having such a lengthy summer vacation is having the time to explore your own home town. Today Heidi, Emily, and I did three things that were new to all three of us. First we took the free tour of the brand new NPR building. For such a public radio person like me, it was a really great hour. Before it even began, I saw Melissa Block in the gift shop. Then, because they were trying to fix a bug, we actually got to go into the studio where they do both Morning Edition and All Things Considered, after that, we actually saw and heard Jean Cochran do the top of the hour newscast. It was awesome!

After the tour, it was off to the Atlas District for lunch at Sticky Rice. The food was good, and although the service was leisurely, it was kind of nice to spend time over a mid-day meal. It almost made up for the several hundred five minute lunches I've bolted through in the last twenty years.

Our final destination was Union Market. A friend at school had mentioned how cool it was, and since we were in the neighborhood, we went over to check it out. As we walked past Adirondack Chairs, picnic tables, and a half-dozen corn hole boards, a Streamline trailer selling snow cones, cold beer, and other summer food blasted music. At 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon, the place was a party waiting to happen. Inside, we browsed the artisan food vendors and the hip housewares shop, and came away with a few goodies-- fennel pollen for me!

Heading back out to the car, I was happy to see bean bags flying and cold beer sweating on the picnic tables. The party had started! 

Privilege

According to Wikipedia, over one billion people in the world live in slums. A slum, as defined by the United Nations is, "a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing, squalor, and lacking in tenure."

Perhaps you are wondering just who it is that doesn't know what a slum is, after all, the word carries enormous emotional freight, but as I listened to a piece on NPR this morning about the efforts of some residents of slums to use 21st century technology, GPS and satellite imagery, to literally put their homes on the map, it reminded me how skewed my perspective can be. 

1200 square feet with electricity and running water? Don't mind if I do.

Something for Everyone

I can't say enough how impressed I am by my 5-year-old niece's thoughtfulness. Take for example our daily conversations revolving around meal planning during her recent stay with us.

Me: Would you like french toast for breakfast?
Annabelle: Yes! I would love that, but what will Aunt Heidi have?

And so it went, as what took me several months of living with a Vegan to wrap my brain around became second nature for her in one day. Mac and cheese for lunch? You bet! But what about Aunt Heidi? Hamburgers for dinner? OK, but what can Aunt Heidi eat?

At this time of year, when we're cooking out a lot, the answer to the question What will Aunt Heidi have? is quite frequently, "A mushroom." We do veggie burgers and chik'n patties, but more often than not, a couple of grilled portabellos and an extra helping of salad will satisfy our resident vegan. It's definitely our fallback entree.

When my sister and brother and I were kids, we used to play a game that started like this, I'm going on a picnic, and I'm going to bring [fill in the blank]. What are YOU going to bring? The object was to have some pattern in mind, so that whenever it was your turn, you gave an example of an item that fit your pattern, and the other players had to figure it out by trial and error.

So, if my pattern was alphabetical order, I would say, I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing apples. What are you going to bring? If the next person said balloons, or anything else that started with a B, then I would benevolently reply, You can come.

But, when they guess something outside your pattern, "You can't come!" is the answer. The audacious rudeness of that reply makes me giggle to this day, as does the shock on the face of anyone who hears it for the first time. Their eyes widen in disbelief and quite often they say, as Annabelle did when I taught her and Richard the game, "That is not nice!"

Even after a week of playing, at five-and-a-half, Annabelle never really got the game (although she played it like a trooper, and coined a new term, "Boss of the Picnic"), but at almost eight? Richard was totally on it, working hard to decipher our patterns and creating some very complex ones of his own. This afternoon he listened closely as Heidi started. "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing tomatoes. What are you bringing?" She turned to Richard.

"Lettuce?" he tried.

"You can come," she told him. She looked at me. "What are you bringing?"

"Bacon?" I offered, thinking BLTs, maybe.

"You can't come." There was something in her expression that made me realize the pattern immediately. "I'm bringing blueberries," she said. "What about you, Richard?"

He wasn't sure, so he looked around the table. "French fries?" he said.

"You can come," she said.

Annabelle was busy doing something with her mom, so it was just the three of us. "I'm bringing..." I paused and considered all the vegan options. There were so many, but I was feeling contrary. "...fried chicken!" I finished.

Heidi raised her eyebrows. "You can't come!" she said.

Richard was listening closely. "I'm bringing hamburgers!" he said.

I laughed.

"You can not come!" Heidi told him.

"I'm bringing hot dogs!" I said.

"Nope!"

"Steak?" Richard asked.

"No!"

By this time, Richard was collapsed in the restaurant booth, laughing hysterically. When his sister returned, he couldn't wait to explain the joke to her. "Annabelle!" he cried, "Aunt Heidi's picnic is vegan, but we're bringing things that aren't vegan!"

Annabelle frowned.

"What do you think? Can I bring chicken wings?" I asked her, suggesting one of her favorites.

"You can if you bring a mushroom, too," she said.

Happy Holiday

I know that after ten days away, Richard and Annabelle are really looking forward to seeing their parents, their cats, and just being home, but it is always the mark of a successful vacation when at dinner the night before everyone packs it in and packs it up someone says, "I wish we could just stay a little longer..." and nobody disagrees.

Arachnophobia

When I stepped out onto my stoop this morning to greet the day and collect the paper, I noticed a firefly caught in a web that had been spun in the corner of our tiny front porch. The spider was nowhere in sight and the firefly looked very vigorous despite the mortal inconvenience of its predicament, and so it was really without a second thought that I scooped it from the edge of the web and set it free.

This evening I shared my experience at dinner. "Oh, yes," said Heidi, "I saw it there, too, but I was late for my class and so I kept going."

"What would you have done?" I asked my nephews, Richard, 7,  and Treat, 18.

"I'd have left him for the spider," Richard shrugged.

I nodded and turned to Treat. "What about you?"

"I would have recognized him for the bait he was!" he shuddered. "Save the firefly? Face the spider!!"