With the weather starting to turn, I've been thinking about 'putting up' some vegetables. So at market, we bought extra sweet corn, green beans and peppers. This stash, along with a bag of tomatoes and peppers from Mike, seemed like a good start. I chopped green beans that we'll use for soups; I sliced up hot peppers for chili, I made a little tomato sauce from finely chopped green peppers, tomatoes and basil from my pot out back, and then cut corn from the cob and bagged it. If the weather holds, maybe I'll do some more of the tomato sauce.
I love the feeling of having these things stored away for the winter. I reminds me of Ma and Pa and the girls filling the attic in the Big Woods of Wisconsin full of onions, pumpkins, squash and potatoes. It also reminds me of summers on my grandparents farm. They would plant several acres of sweet corn; on the perfect weekend, aunts and uncles and cousins would join together to put up the corn. Your job depended upon your age and gender: usually the men and younger kids were in the fields picking corn and then sitting on the back of Grampa's old yellow pick up shucking corn. The women and older kids would be in the kitchen, blanching corn, cutting it from the cobs and filling bags. I enjoyed the outdoor work the best. By the end of the day, we'd leave with coolers full of bags of bright, beautiful corn for our freezer. I don't think I ate corn that came from anywhere other than my grandma and grandpa's fields until sometime in high school.
Putting up my own corn, reminded me of the fun and family togetherness of those days doing corn on the farm.
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