There is an innovation at the Elephant and Castle: we now have a farmer’s market on Saturdays. It’s not very big: 5 stalls, with bread, drinks, 2 vegetable stalls, and a meat stall. I bought some bread, 3 ears of very fresh corn, some Brussels sprouts that are the size of mini cabbages, and four free-range chicken thighs.
Now I’m not a vegetarian, nor do I play one on TV. However, I am becoming more and more disillusioned with the way that our food is grown and provided to us by the big supermarkets. Tesco often has corn on the cob, two smallish ears, wrapped up in cellophane but bereft of the protective leaves, ready to cook. I have found it pretty insipid. Their free-range chicken is expensive but just doesn’t taste like Mom’s chicken, in any way, shape, or form.
So I baked the four chicken thighs, set the pot of water on the stove and shucked the three ears of corn. I cut one ear in half (there are only the two of us), and boiled them for the scant amount of time that it took for them to be heated through.
So we sat down to a salad, 1-1/2 ears of corn, and two medium-sized baked chicken thighs. Everything was perfect. The corn tasted almost (but not quite) like the corn we used to buy from my step-grandfather’s farm stall in Marblehead. Fresh, juicy, easily bitten off the cob, delicious with or without butter.
We don’t say grace before meals. I never have, except in the seminary. However, as I looked at the plate, I said a silent prayer of thanks for the farmer who dragged his produce all the way from Kent to a farmer’s market in deepest, darkest South London—a market which is not yet popular enough to have crowds thronging the stalls. I also thanked the chicken for giving up its life for our table. This might seem somewhat pagan but, you know, it made me feel much better, for some reason. The Spirit that animates us all certainly cast a little bit of itself into that chicken, and the least I can do is thank that little bit of Spirit for keeping us nourished.
Are the British calling it “corn” nowadays? Or do your New England roots prevent you from being able to being yourself to say “maize”?
They were calling it “corn” on the stall. Maize is cattle feed, from what I understand. All I know is that it was delicious.
Fifty years ago we grew sweet corn in the back yard. No corn from any market tasted so good. We also grew tomatoes, beans, peas, radishes, watermelon, winter squash and cantelope. There were big green horned worms six inches long on our tomato vines; now I’d like to grow some heirloom varietoes in a pot hangimg upside down on our front porch. I haven’t gone into the back yard for several years. Now our neighbor’s free-range chickens provide us music and an occasional egg, far superior to anything found in the markets.
There are no longer any traces of the lemon groves for which our town of Lemon Grove is named and financial conditions threaten the continued existance of the city itself, too many city officials having been paid too much and been given too generous a retirement too early.
We have become numb to too much mediocre food, crappy entertainment and extended quantity of life with diminished quality. The infrequent encounters with decent food are worth giving thanks for.
“Corn” is any grain. If the grain is barley, we have barleycorns. If the grain is maize, we just call it “corn”.