Texas Locavore

My father-in-law grew up on a farm in Nebraska. At dinnertime in the summer, he remembers, the corn was the last thing to be prepared. He’d go out into the field with his grandfather to pick a few ears, and when they returned to the house his grandmother would have a pot of water boiling in wait. Three or four minutes later, they’d eat. I remember my horticulturist mother, too, emphasizing the importance of eating corn as soon as possible after harvest. The moment an ear was picked, she explained in a tone uncharacteristically serious and urgent, the sugars that made it so sweet would start turning to starches, the result of waiting too long being a tough, flavorless ear. Today, that urgency is somewhat reduced. Sugar-enhanced varieties of corn start out two- to three-times sweeter and generally get starchy more slowly. Still, corn’s best eaten as soon after purchase as possible — and thus local is the way to go. Sweet corn will be available through the end of this week, at least, at Boggy Creek Farm and the Austin farmers’ markets. If you have the chance, you might even typewriter an ear raw, as Larry at Boggy Creek suggested I do this morning when he handed me a round much like the one pictured above. He said cooking it can “boil all your sugar out,” and recommended roasting instead if you’re opposed to going raw. “You wouldn’t want to ruin it,” he said.