With the awful drought we might be seeing the last of any kind of corn for awhile or at lease corn that is affordable. When I think of the miles, and miles, and miles of corn fields we past in our travels in SD, it just breaks my heart thinking of what all the farmers in the mid-west are dealing with.

Yes, I know. Here corn is $4 a dozen this year at my favorite farm market due to the drought and the necessity of irrigation, usually it's $3 a dozen.

Their best seller is something called "Mirai", and I just bought a mixed bushel for $12 of that, a bicolor similar to "Peaches and Cream" and good old "SilverQueen".

The problem is that today's hybrids cannot be planted next to each other, the cross pollination messes up the "sweet" gene and you end up with field corn or who knows what. So the SE corn can't be planted next to the Super Sweets or the Sh2, and none can be planted with the old fashioned corn or sweet corn. Well some can, but I can never remember which variety is which and what can be planted together, so I tend to just plant one variety.

So, here in Michigan if you get off the main drags and on the back roads, up here in the boondocks we can still buy SilverQueen.

Annie

To me Peaches and Cream is sweet....and I love it. Sweet is the desirable quality in sweet corn. in hours after it is off the stalk the sugar turns to starch and the sweet factor declines....that's why you start the water bo0iling before you pick the corn. The "super sweet" varieties are bred to hold on to the sugar longer after picking before it turns to starch.
Not liking sweet corn is a little like loving canned asparagus....because you have never tasted the real thing, they way it's supposed to be.

I'm not crazy for sweet corn and neither is Elery. We'll eat it, it's OK, but it's one of those things that I'm relatively apathetic about, along with cheesecake. I can take 'em or leave 'em, and it doesn't make a lot of difference to me, I have no strong like or dislike for it.

That has not kept me from canning a couple of bushels of it, because although I'm apathetic about it by itself I do like it in corn chowder, I like kernels of corn in cornbread and I like scalloped corn occasionally. I usually freeze it but this year my freezer room is taken up by home grown chickens.

Annie

I was just thinking about the same thing recently. I think it is different to have fresh picked corn, sweet from the garden that tastes like corn, than corn that has been bred to taste like corn syrup with no corn flavor at all.

Lindac alluded to: "getting the water boiling".
Well, I've been cooking the corn in the microwave.
I'm wondering if boiling would reduce the sweetness,
so as to make it edible.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.....

My favorite is Golden Bantam. I can still get it at one farm stand but it's $6/dozen and they will not sell it by the bushel. I usually just get an ear ot two for myself since the family likes the super sweet varieties.

We had a very early variety last year (June) that we got in Rhode Island. The kernals were large & it tasted so "corny". I didn't know what type it was & dcarch came up with it. I thought I'd made a note but couldn't find a trace of that note this year. Couldn't find the corn either. Hope dcarch sees this thread. The corn was great & not too sweet.

/tricia

A few weeks ago my two granddaughters spent the weekend with us. I don't remember what I fixed for dinner, but the vegetable was corn. Abby, who is seven years old, took one bite and told me she didn't want to eat anymore because it was too sweet. Actually, I didn't blame her. It was one of those ubiquitous super sweet varieties. It was more sweet tasting than corny. I didn't hate it, but, at the same time, I didn't enjoy it that much either. It was white corn, and I've found that in order to get a cornier corn, I need to get yellow corn. However, it's getting harder & harder to find yellow corn in my local markets. And when I do, it's more expensive than the sweeter white corn.

Marylanders adore pale white Silver Queen, which we don't think even tastes like corn. We think corn should be yellow and we compromise by eating Ambrosia, one of the many bi-color varieties, which tastes like corn and isn't super-sweet. When we can get it, we go for the baker's dozen and share with others. Yumm.

Unfortunately our summer has been record breaking heat, and only .20 inches of rain since May. As a result the sweet corn has been tough small and not very tasty.

The sweeter the better as far as I'm concerned. I bought some sweet white corn at the farmer's market on Saturday. Beautiful tiny kernels.

~Ann

For a few years now, due to the CF, I've wondered what the, um, "cornies" consider great corn. The local corn I get is typically bi-color and I really like it - when it's good - yet people on the forum seem to complain about it a lot. I remember my mom liking the tiny-kerneled white corn, but to me that was just a shot of flavor and no substance. I avoid the straight yellow corn I occassionally see here because to my taste it's typically tough and I'd just as soon not eat it.

Of course I realize there are many varieties of corn of each color, but unless I'm buying it straight from the farmer - which I rarely get to do - if I were to ask what variety it was I suspect I'd get looked at like I had three heads.

FOAS, I totally understand about the farmers looking at
you, as having 3 heads. When the snow is on the ground,
and they are ordering their sweet corn seed, they are
transfixed by the pictures of 'super sweet' corn in the
seed catalogs, and even though it costs a whole lot more,
they go ahead and order it. When customers come to their
roadside stands and ask what variety it is, they don't
have a clue. And when sales are slow, because the customers think the corn is way too sweet, they attribute
it to the economic conditions. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad.