So I'm trapped at home because my husband takes our only vehicle to work, (I cannot wait until my own car arrives) without much to do except watch the olympics on  a 13" tv, while sitting on a folding chair (I am NOT complaining though, because I've lived life before without any chairs at all and it isn't much fun) so I thought it would be nice if I had something productive to do until tomorrow(!!!!!) when stuff finally gets delivered.

Let me back up a bit.  One of the problems I had with an entire summer of moving, was that I thought I would somehow miss sweet corn season.  This may not be a big deal for you, but I grew up in South Dakota and the garden season was big.  Now I just lived 3 years in Hawaii, and they do grow corn there (albeit genetically altered) and it tastes okay, but it is harder.  It doesn't have all the milky goodness that true sweet corn has.  It is available most of the year, and is fairly expensive.  Before Hawaii, we lived for two years in Kansas, and believe me, we ate our share of corn there because the four years before that, we lived in Alaska.  They grow sweet corn there, but it is about $2-3 per ear(!) and so is more of a treat.  Saturday, after we moved into the house, we went grocery shopping and they had corn for $.38 per ear, which seemed a good price, so I bought some and we had it for supper and it was delicious!  Yea!  Maybe we didn't totally miss out on the corn. 

I decided on Monday that I would go back and buy more corn--enough to freeze, and Tuesday morning, I set about doing it.

 For equipment, you don't need much.  A  large kettle...

Fill with water and bring it to a boil.  You will also need a cutting board and sharp, strong knife.



Take the corn out of the ice water and let it drain in a colander.  Now it is time to slice it off the cob.  Stand the ear up on it's wider, more stable, end, and using a knife, slice down trying to get between the corn and the cob. 

The trick is to get the most of the kernels but no cob.  A little practice helps.  If you cut too shallowly, you can always run your knife down again to get the remaining goodness off the cob.  This step is messy!  The kernels go careening all over!  I can only stand to do about  two ears at a time before I start scooping it up into bags, but if you have a larger cutting board, or a higher tolerance of a mess, you can do more.

See how this came off in slabs?  That is what I love.  When you cook with this corn in the winter, it won't look like plain old frozen corn.

 Load it up into a freezer bag and don't forget to mark it!  I love doing this step because you can make bags as full as your family size dictates.  It is just the two of us, so I bag small amounts.  I can always make multiple bags if we have company!



I also like to press the corn all over the bag, making it as flat as possible, because that way, they stack nicely in the freezer, and better yet, they thaw quickly!  When it is time to cook and serve, my favorite way is to just saute it for a few minutes in butter.  Yum!  It is also excellent if you toss the thawed corn with a little olive oil, spread out on a sheet pan, and roast at 375 until it starts browning.  Yum!  Also tasty is to put it in some chowder.  I could go on and on...

It is sounding so good that I saved out an ear from the freezing process for my lunch.



JoAnne

PS.  Aftr I finished my lunch, my husband called:  My car was in!!!  He was able to get away from work so we could go to Norfolk to get it.  It feels great to be independant again!

By now I think everyone knows I'm moving.  One of the biggest hassles for me is trying to use up all the food I have in the house.  Yes, the movers will pack and take some, but we are only allowed a certain weight allowance and I would rather move fabric than canned goods!  I was trying to empty out my freezer and came across a lot of nuts.  I had walnuts, pecans, and almonds.  I went online to one of my favorite sites:  allrecipes.com and typed in the nuts I had in the search box.  They have a neat search where you can type in any ingredients you have and it will pop up recipes that use them.  My results included this granola recipe. 

I have never successfully made granola before.  I once tried making my own granola bars and they burned.  However, I read through the recipe and thought I could make it.  I did make some changes, though.  That is actually one of my pet peeves:  people who try a recipe but change it and then don't like the results.  You may have read some reviews (another great feature of allrecipes) like this "I made this and don't understand why it gets such good reviews.  I left out the sugar and used canola oil instead of butter and it just tastes terrible."  Ha ha.  My changes were made based on ingredient availablility.  I was making this to use up stuff, not buy more!

I saw that it called for 8 cups of rolled oats.  A scan of my pantry revealed "quick cooking oats" and there wasn't 8 cups--more like 5.  I put that in the bowl.  Next was the wheat germ.  I had a full jar of that!  It didn't call for a full jar, though.  Next was oat bran.  I didn't have that so I used all my wheat germ.  I needed 3 cups total of the germ and bran but there wasn't that much in the jar, maybe a little over 2 cups?  I also had sunflower nuts, a bit more than one cup but I was short on the other so I put them all in.  The rest of the dry ingredients were nuts so I got mine out and started chopping.  I had more than a cup of the almonds and walnuts but not a full cup of pecans.  I also had macadamia nuts (it is Hawaii after all) so I chopped some of them, too.  I was pretty generous with the nuts because I wanted to use them up and I was still short on volume.  I looked through my pantry again to see if I had anything else and discovered a full bag of shredded, unsweetened coconut.  I thought it would be perfect, so I poured the whole thing in.  By now I thought I had enough dry ingredients.  Onto the wet.

Half a cup of brown sugar was easy, as was the cup of oil.  I ran into another problem with the honey and maple syrup.  The recipe calls for 1/4 cup maple syrup and 3/4 cup honey.  (one cup total)  I ended up using about a third cup of honey and the rest in syrup (oh, I used real maple syrup, not the pancake stuff).  I followed the rest of the directions but I ended up doubling the oven time.  It didn't look "toasty" enough to me when I stirred at the required time.  I just stirred it every 7 minutes or so until it looked the right color to me.

The results were absoluely delicious!  It isn't "hard" like purchased granola, but plenty crunchy and crisp.  It wasn't too oily or sweet, either, and the amount of cinnamon was just right too--I don't care for it to be overwhelming.  I expect it is so good becasue I was very generous with the "good (expensive) stuff--the nuts) and stinted on the oat bran!  Anyway, we will have no problem eating it all and I was very pleased to use up so much stuff!

Aloha,
JoAnne