Do you know what nutritionist state is one of the healthiest condiments to eat? Can you guess what condiment I have shunned most of my entire life, until I met my wife Cora 4 years ago? Do you know what Elote is? Can a stubborn 60-year-old man of German lineage change? Here we go.
By the time you receive this article in your mailbox I will be enjoying the first harvest of my farm, sweet corn. Of the 90 plus million acres of corn planted in the United States this year, less than 2% of it is sweet corn. I have found that most of my city friends cannot tell the difference from a patch of sweet corn and a field of regular, (yellow dent field corn), what many of my non-farm friends call feed corn.
I believe every veteran farmer can tell the difference with just a casual glance. The first giveaway is the height, the second is the location, and the third involves sexual reproduction, perhaps not in that order. Let me elaborate in backward fashion.
Sweet corn tassels much earlier than field corn. Tasseling is the beginning of the reproductive stage where grains of pollen are shed from the top of the plant to fertilize each corn silk on the ear to reproduce into a delicious and juicy kernel of corn.
Most farmers plant a small patch of sweet corn at the edge of the field as close to the road or the farmstead as possible for ease of picking. And finally, field corn is almost always at least 7-8 feet tall all the way up to 10-12 feet. Sweet corn rarely exceeds 6-7 feet in height.
It was many years ago while I listened to news report on healthy eating that I heard salsa is one of the best condiments you could eat. Loaded with vegetables and lower in sugar than many sauces like ketchup and barbecue sauce. This always allowed me to enjoy a certain snack with no guilt whatsoever. I would cut the kernels off my fresh ears of sweet corn right from the field. I would freeze the juicy nuggets and throughout the year, add it to salsa for dipping my probably not so healthy chips into it for a snack. It is wrong to believe the heathy benefits of the corn and salsa outweighed the fried chips.
It was at the Farm Bureau Blue grass concert after the barn quilt tour several years ago that Cora and I visited the taco truck for a snack. She was elated when she saw “Mexican Street Corn”, Elote, on the menu. I was flabbergasted to learn that they serve corn on the cob slathered with mayonnaise and powdered parmesan cheese and spice, and she ate it! How could this be a food people love and crave? It contains mayonnaise, the one condiment I have always avoided like the I-80 bridge in Joliet. Who could eat such an abomination?
Guess what. I now love Elote, made with mayonnaise. All winter I put some frozen corn in a bowl, squirt a topping of mayonnaise on top and shake parmesan cheese on it and heat it for 2 minutes in the microwave. It is delicious.
Look out sweet corn salsa, move over, there is a new boss in town, it is called Elote and has mayonnaise. If you come by the farm after reading this article, I suspect you might find me out outstanding in the field picking sweet corn, or if it is evening, I might be standing at the butcher block island cutting corn off the cob so I can enjoy Elote or sweet corn salsa all winter long.
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