Child of the Corn

Last weekend Emily and I went to our farm co-op in rural Wisconsin. It's was really cool to see the actual source of all the food we get once a week. Plus I never knew what a broccoli plant looked like, but that's for Emily to blog about.

Anyway, we spent about half the day there, and the lady that runs the farm put us to work, as you can see below. We gathered all our own corn, shucked it, and cooked. We also had to wash our own dishes. It was a true co-op. We had a great time.


You may not be able to tell that I am hauling a wheelbarrow full of corn.

Another tidbit we learned is you can eat the sweet corn raw, straight off the stalk. It was damn good, but even better when cooked. You'd think I'd know this already, seeing as how I spent four years running cross country and track for a college in Iowa. Indeed, I probably ran past 1,000,000 corn stalks in that time. But that was all seed corn. Big hard chunks of seed. Eating a central Iowa corn cob raw would be like eating a molar cob. Not so with sweet corn. It was so sweet and rich, that it tasted pre-buttered.

So after a weekend of eating organic vegetables and free-range beef, I need to counteract all that. What better way than by going to the State Fair for the last two nights! Since we've gone at night, there's not much to do but watch bands, go to the midway, and eat. Most of the exhibits are closed at night.

The first night I had a beer, mini donuts, sausage-on-a-stick (wrapped in bread), and pork chop-on-a-stick for dinner. Last night it was part of Emily's turkey tenderloin on-a-stick, most of her beer, lemonade, and a very mediocre chicken fajita. Take that healthy, organic eating!

By the way, the new food-on-a-sticks that are getting all the buzz is key lime pie on-a-stick and deep fried Twinkie on-a-stick. And the most controversial is the fan the Republican party is handing out: Lies Told by the DFL On-A-Stick. For you non-Minnesotans, DFL is the Democrats (Democratic Farm-Labor party to be exact). The college Republicans were standing in front of th DFL booth, handing the fans out. Classy. Partisan politics is getting very ugly in Minnesota.

For more on the State Fair, including Emily's family competing in the fair, click here.