More corn trivia: Did you know that you can tell if a field of corn is too dry just by looking at it as you drive by? When corn experiences a shortage of water, the leaves curl up to reduce evaporation of the water in the leaves. When that happens, you can mostly only see the bottom of leaves, which are lighter in color than the tops of the leaves you normally see.

My brain is just full of farmer-trivia....

According to Alton Brown, sweet corn begins converting its sugar to starch as soon as it's picked, so fresh-picked corn is the way to go, the fresher, the better.

When I was little, my Dad would only go to pick the corn once my Mom had started boiling the water.

We used to have a garden back in Pennsylvania where we grew corn, so it would go from 100 yards from the back door to the pot. And it never tasted sweet to me, while everyone around me was going, "mmm, so sweet, it's delicious." It was just acidic and bitter.

I still think you all are participating in a huge conspiracy to hide the fact that fresh corn tastes like pants and none of you want to admit that you got taken in when your parents said, "Try this, it's sweet!"

I got spoiled by growing up with a big vegetable garden. When I was little it never occurred to me that someone wouldn't pick their corn fresh right before they were ready to cook it. NSM now, of course, but boy did that spoil me for corn. Nom nom nom.

Ah. They don't do that anymore, do they?

I don't know. She'd had a stroke from the brain tumor. I don't know if that influenced the doctor's choice. But I suspect it still happens.

Doctors and nurses make a lot of decisions that don't always go through the patient.

My grandma's farm alternated soybeans with field corn as its main crops, but there was a little patch of field between her house and my uncle's that had sweet corn every year for all of us in the family to come over and pick in the fall. It was always fun to run over on Sunday, spend the day climbing the apple trees in Grandma's orchard of six trees (one was a perfect climbing tree, with a notch about three feet off the ground and a sloping branch that was easy to shimmy up), pick the apples and wash them in the wellwater in the yard and eat them until you got queasy, pet Dolly, the horse one of my greatuncles boarded there, and then head out to the field with Mom and Dad and pick corn. After that, we'd head over to Uncle Ray's and play touch football with the cousins.

none of you want to admit that you got taken in when your parents said, "Try this, it's sweet!"

I don't think it's particularly sweet, but it is good.

I got spoiled by growing up with a big vegetable garden. When I was little it never occurred to me that someone wouldn't pick their corn fresh right before they were ready to cook it.

When I got to college, I didn't really know how to pick vegetables at a store, because at home it was always "that row of beans/peas/melon is ready", which really didn't translate to what I found in the store.

Kristin! How are you feeling? Did you get any sleep?

Doctors and nurses make a lot of decisions that don't always go through the patient.

Sure, but telling the relatives of a lucid patient things and not the patient herself seems... negligent. Maybe it was because of the era that you'd tell a woman's husband instead of her?

Well, again, just to be clear in my legally binding status of on-line psudonym: Don't go telling George and/or Ray instead of me if I'm still all there.

You know who sucks?

Everyone but us.

Agreed

This so reminds me of last year when my Drama students conceptualized an original musical called "F-you: the musical". One of the songs was entitled "Everybody Sucks (but you and me)". It was thoroughly hysterical and brought us so much joy whenever the weeks got a little intense (or DD was being heinous).