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Post by mjc on Dec 4, 2009 2:31:02 GMT -5
I'm looking for a corn that can pretty much be used for everything...eating fresh/roasting ears at the milk stage, then let to dry out be used as meal/flour or feed. I detest the modern 'supers', so it doesn't have to be exceedingly sweet to begin with. I'd prefer something that actually tastes like corn. I don't care if it is red, white, yellow or mixed colors...so that isn't a problem. I'd like to keep it in the 100 days to dry range.
So does what I want exist or do I have to 'build my own'...
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Post by canadamike on Dec 4, 2009 3:00:26 GMT -5
The true way to know exactly would be to sitwith you and go through a taste test, corn taste is soooo subjective. What they eat in the south as sweet corn i would almost cry feeding it to chickens, I would feel crual, I despise it so much....then it is just talking, I know the chickens would love it.
Where do you live?
Bloody butcher has the reputation of being kind of like that, and I am sure there are others. In fact most field corns are somewhat edible at a certain period oftheir growth, milk stage. It is just milk stage in many is like a flying bird: you see it, then soon after you don't...
Loving to cook, theidea of ''one size fits all'' is kind of totally contrarian to my culture.
I sure would settle on 3 corns if I was asked for a viable minimum corn diet on a remote island:
One sweet, in my case it would be either Golden Bantam or probably more White Midget ( sooooooo gooooood and sweet but with taste), for extended harvesting season and cobs on the tillers
One flint, for polenta( like corn grits but coarser) and animal feed other than cows, it could be a number of native ones
One flour, to be mixed with flint at various % to get the desired mix ( kind of , or to make hominy our simply flour, it would SURE be ONEIDA, the most amazingly tasty flour corn I ever put in my mouth, I had dairy farmers taste it and it was a total riot. I could munch on it during the day instead of chips, it is that good
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Post by Alan on Dec 4, 2009 16:42:24 GMT -5
Indeed MJC, it does exist.
The Astronomy Domine genepool was bred specifically for this purpose, unfortunately I had a near total crop failure this season (animal damage from deer, raccorn, squirrel) and don't have extra seed at the moment and would have enven less if it weren't for the uber awesome Johno who saved me on that one.
However, if you want some next fall, let me know and I'll send you some seed stock, it will be well worth making many selections from my friend.
-Alan
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Post by mjc on Dec 4, 2009 22:51:13 GMT -5
Sounds like a plan...
Basically, I want to simplify my corn growing...I want one 'all purpose', a popcorn (we eat a boat load of it in a year) and one early 'mainstream' sweet to use at the FM.
When I was telling my wife about my frustrating research into this last night, she asked, 'you mean you can't get corn like you could fifty years ago?'...I tried explaining it, but I don't think she quite got it. I know that when I was a kid, a few of the farmers still grew OP corn...and several of them grew something that they used for roasting ears and feed corn with grinding some to make cornbread and stuff as needed. And this was up into the mid 70s...I just wish I knew what varieties they were growing. I do know that the most common one was a yellow corn, with a slight red cast and red cob, with large ears.
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Post by Blueflint on Dec 6, 2009 11:57:12 GMT -5
Common roasting, flour and feed corn would have been Hickory King and Bloody Butcher and there was a huge variety of other Southern Dents and Southern Derived Dents used for that purpose...multi purpose that is.
Northern Native Americans used various flints and semi flints (hard shelled flours) since they were hardy, produced in a variety of soils, could take huge weather changes and these were used for flour, grits and roasting. Definitely multi purpose.
Blueflint
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Post by Alan on Dec 7, 2009 16:08:31 GMT -5
Common roasting, flour and feed corn would have been Hickory King and Bloody Butcher and there was a huge variety of other Southern Dents and Southern Derived Dents used for that purpose...multi purpose that is. Northern Native Americans used various flints and semi flints (hard shelled flours) since they were hardy, produced in a variety of soils, could take huge weather changes and these were used for flour, grits and roasting. Definitely multi purpose. Blueflint Excellent advice buddy, round these parts Hickory King Yellow was used as the dual purpose varietiy of it's day. |
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Post by ozarklady on Dec 22, 2009 12:35:21 GMT -5
I have also been searching for the taste of corn from my childhood. I know, we romanticize our memories. But, the corn that I miss had tiny white kernels, so tender and juicy, and they were not arranged in a particular row. I ordered Country Gentleman Shoepeg hoping this will be close to what I remember. And the post about Oneida for flour has me interested, who supplies this corn seed? I am rebuilding all of my seed collections.
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Post by sandbar on Dec 22, 2009 14:22:40 GMT -5
Ozarklady, I sometimes have the same problem as you ... a hunger for a particular food that I experienced as a youngster. Then, when I find it ... well ... it just doesn't taste the same. I have come to the conclusion that either my taste buds are dying due to age ( www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/004013.htm ) or I'm killing them off with repeated applications of Capsaicin.  |
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Post by mjc on Dec 22, 2009 15:55:54 GMT -5
Ozarklady, I sometimes have the same problem as you ... a hunger for a particular food that I experienced as a youngster. Then, when I find it ... well ... it just doesn't taste the same. I have come to the conclusion that either my taste buds are dying due to age ( www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/004013.htm ) or I'm killing them off with repeated applications of Capsaicin. Or it isn't the same variety or grown the same way... I have the same problem with certain things...especially Pepsi, until this past spring/summer when Pepsi released Pepsi Throwback...the stuff with sugar instead of HFCS/corn syrup. The lack of flavor in many commercial foodstuffs is probably due to the widespread use of farming techniques that maximize shipping/storage and minimize everything else (except price...and especially what the farmers get paid). |
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Post by ozarklady on Dec 22, 2009 18:05:30 GMT -5
You are likely correct, I grew up in farm country, the Mississippi River Delta, and we always had a garden. So, likely the water was on boiling before the corn was picked! And all the flavor was captured... for my memories.
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Post by castanea on Dec 23, 2009 22:48:33 GMT -5
I came to the conclusion a few years ago that sometimes 2 different things might be true:
1. Sometimes you just remember tastes incorrectly because your taste buds were less sophisticated when you were young. This is true of many candies that were exciting to eat when I was kid. I just don't like that kind of sugary junk now. And while I still like chocolate, now I only like the kind I can't afford.
2. Sometimes your memory is right and you just haven't found what you are looking for. A few years ago I finally found a tomato that tasted exactly like tomatoes tasted when I was a kid, and this was long after I had given up on finding it, so it was pretty exciting. I went yelling to my wife saying that this tomato tasted just like they did when I was a kid. Of course it didn't taste anything like the ones she ate as a kid, so she didn't really get to share the experience.
Although I grew up eating yellow corn, the red corn I grew this year tasted a lot like the corn I ate when I was a kid. Most modern corns really don't taste anything like the corn I ate grwoing up. I can appreciate the supersweet corns for what they are, but to me they are almost a different species than the corn I grew up eating.
I'm still looking for a black diamond watermelon that tasted like they did when I was a kid. My problem is not that they taste different now, but that I can't find one that has matured properly. Whenever I find one or grow one, they wind up not maturing for one reason or another. I don't think they do so well here on the west coast as in the south or Midwest.
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