corny country.

M is in Indiana this week, so it's odd that my day revolved around corn.

Image from IndieBound.

Stella and I dried corn this afternoon. There was a recipe (directions??) for it in my new book, and since the only thing we eat corn in other than popcorn is Corn and Bacon Soup, I decided to give it a go.  Thus, my girl and I sat down this morning to shuck two dozen ears of corn.  She gave up when a giant worm ended up in her hand on her first ear.  She squealed like she'd been hit with a branding iron and threw the worm halfway across the room.  Her role was then downgraded from "co-shucker" to "girl who halfheartedly pulls silks off cobs after her mother shucks them and makes double sure there are no worms left." She also decided during this venture that we were playing prairie girls who were putting up food for our families for the winter.  She stacked all the ears of corn on the counter, and when we were done she said, "Look how much corn I have to feed my family during the winter. Where is yours?"

Ingrate.

After parboiling all the corn, I cut it off the cobs and dried it and dried it and dried it and dried it.  The book said it would take two hours.  It took four hours for one pan and six for the other. And now we have one quart of dried corn to rehydrate for soup during the long, cold, evil winter.

I will say that she has been a great helper during my food preserving experiment.  She helped peel all zillion pounds of tomatoes that I canned, and she added the lemon juice to each jar.

For now our food cache has 21 quarts of tomatoes, three half pints of strawberry jam (we've eaten two jars since May), four half pints of drunken cherries, and four half pints of dried corn.  I've also got a pound of green beans strung up in the kitchen drying.  They're called leather britches, and with a name like that you know I had to try it.

Image from Friends Drift Inn.

We're planning to buy a freezer soon, too, because you can barely open and close ours as I'm constantly making and freezing chicken and vegetable stocks, and I loaded the fridge with frozen strawberries earlier this summer.

Also, I bet you're wishing I'd just stayed gone because the past two posts have been the opposite of riveting.  Now you understand why I've not been blogging.