Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 15, 2021

Clever, sir.

I feel somewhat the same way, even though retired. Because there’s one, all too brief window of time in which you can get a locally grown heritage tomato AND good fresh local corn.

We had one of those with dinner tonight. Perfectly ripe bicolor corn grown by our friend Nancy, cut from the cob and served with room temperature (therefore melty) butter. Bliss.

Our cooking technique:

Take two ears of corn, cut off the stem ends with a large sharp knife, far enough in that when it slicks up from being cooked, you can just squeeze the corn out of the shucks like toothpaste. Also cut off the top tassels, leaving an inch or so of shuck to grip for the “toothpaste move”. Peel off all but the inner 2 or three layers of shuck. Put the ears in their shucks into a plastic bag, one pointing each way, fold the bag under and cook at high for 2 minutes and maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Take the bag out and rotate each ear 180º so the “inner” becomes the “outer” in both cases. Retuck the bag and do it again. (There’s STEAM in that bag: Be careful!). Wrap the corn, bag and all in a towel or what have you and let them “self cook” for 1 more minute. Pull one ear out, and grabbing the top (with a hot pad!) s-q-u-e-e-z-e the ear out of the shuck. 95%+ of the corn silk will remain with the shuck. You could serve it on the cob at this point. We serve it with about a tablespoon of real butter, no salt needed because we use the lightly salted butter rather than the unsalted. I prefer to cut from the cob, protecting my mouth from super-hot corn… I place the shuck on the far side of the plate to catch the bouncers, then holding the cob vertical, point up, I cut carefully from point to base, getting about 3 or so rows of kernels. Rotate and do it again. Use a hot pad to protect the non-dominant hand.

(Consider adding two chopped basil leaves to each serving of corn. Consider adding a shake or two of curry powder. Seriously consider just eating it with butter…)

Et one Caulfield!!

Heck, I felt that way after just walking the refuse cans 100’ to the curb at 9:30pm last Thu. So humid our local weather guy calls it air you can wear.

But at least he got to say Joy to you, we’ve won

Unlike in March, the Ides of August is the thirteenth day of the month.

Summer days. Some are not.

Good scanning: good iambic tetrameter for the first five panels—how nice!

The Ides of August are on the 13th, Jef.

There as many ways to cook corn as there are corn cookers. With just two ears, we shuck, butter, wrap in waxed paper and zap for 2:30. With lots we steam them for 4 minutes. Easier than bringing a full pot of water to a boil.

That’s the best ode to summer I ever saw. Thanks Caulfield.

Nike

Pheidippides is awfully fair skinned for one of Mediterranean descent, especially one who purportedly just ran 240km in blazing sunlight.

That was really good, Caulfield!

You Gotta Love August

Great summers never die, they just fade away. Not that I’ve ever had a really great summer, but I remember the better ones from being a kid. Somehow there are school buses, apple harvest, first frost, and you realize another one is in the books.

Here in SoCal the hot days persist well into October.

We are still waiting for summer where I live. It feels like October instead. We just had two days of hot sunny weather, clouds and cold is coming back tomorrow.

It is not in any way possible for summer to be over soon enough!