He was a brilliant handsome bipolar journalist, and I suspect his siblings settled him on the farm so that when he couldn’t write because of his demons, he’d still get up early for the milking.
She tended the kitchen garden, put up hundreds of pounds of fruit, vegetables, pickles and jams, and cooked for hundred-man threshings.
She served on the Library Board and played the organ at the Anglican Church.
And once a week, in the London Free Press (a distinguished daily, still publishing,) Gammy shape-shifted into Mary Hastings. Mary was a Dear Abby/Martha Stewart hybrid, a “person “so wise that she could solve every knitting dilemma, tidy up your love life and give you her Blue Ribbon recipe for corn relish. Who knows, maybe the corn relish could improve your love life...
My grandfather grew mostly feed corn, but there were always a few long rows of Golden Bantam, the superior sweet corn species of the day. My father gets teary-eyed, thinking of the platters of Golden Bantam, sweating butter, on the dinner tables of late July and August, mountains of milky sweetness just five minutes from the field to the pot.
Here in the ‘Ville, we can buy great fresh corn in season, and I do, twice a week whenever I can. I suspect I use more dental floss in the summer, because my chompers move like a finely tuned machine up and down those juicy rows.
It is easy to forget that there are other ways to cook corn when it is cheap and plentiful, but there are. This may be the best, especially toward the end of the season, when the kernels are larger, starchier and not quite as tender as those on the first ears from the farm stand.
My grandmother called it scalloped corn, and I’d forgotten about the dish until I came upon a blog post by food writer Michael Ruhlman. He calls it Baked Buttered Corn, and sorry, Gammy, I’m going with his name, because although you made it the same way “Baked Buttered Corn” describes its simplicity.
BAKED BUTTERED CORN
Ingredients
5 ears corn
6 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper
Preparation
Preheat oven to 400.
Grate the kernels from four of the ears with the large-holed side of a box grater. Do this over a large shallow bowl because you want to collect every precious drop of the milk.
Using a knife, cut the kernels lengthwise from the fifth ear and run the blunt side of your knife down the empty cob to capture all the juice you can.
Butter a baking dish that will hold the kernels and juice in an approximately three-inch layer.
Sprinkle the corn with salt and pepper and dot it with medium-sized chunks of the butter.
Bake for about 40 minutes until the crust turns golden—don’t over bake, but make sure the corn is softened and bubbly.
Serve with a plate of sliced garden tomatoes, and maybe some chicken from the grill.
There you have it: August on a plate.
