Today, my cousin's Matt and Mike grow Green Giant sweet corn (and peas). We didn't do this growing up though. I have vivid memories of buying our local sweet corn from the Elfring kids on Hwy 212, between Hector and Bird Island, on the south side of the road. My mom would pull over on the way back from our regular Saturday cleaning time (with Dee, Kris and Toots) at my Grandpa's in B.I.
The Elfring kids would sell it from the back of a pick up, parked in their field approach. Aside from their Green Giant crop, they grew a bunch of acres for their own personal sales. My mom use to allude they were saving their corn money for their collage fund.
My mom always served the sweet corn with meat - hamburgers (pattied from the frozen Hector Meat Market ground beef in the deep freeze) or Schweigert hot dogs usually. Sweet corn was always for supper, and never for lunch. (But of course, lunch is dinner in the country. Back then, dinner was often a big, heavy meal for the working men.)She would tell Brett and me if we didn't eat at least a few bites of meat with all those ears of corn, we would get the oopy-doopys! She was very serious about this. (Okay... my mom was never all that serious!)
Of course we rolled our sweet corn in butter, creating a mess of the dish. As an adult, Mark and I do the same with our own kids.
I remember summer as a kid thinking I could never get enough corn. I would have eaten it for every supper. I remember my mom shucking the corn outside on the step, with a brown paper bag in front of her. Usually, she broke the ears in half. I remember the big pot of water boiling on the stove. I remember the steam. I remember my mom running cold tap water over the corn to cool it off so we could eat it.I do it the exact same way for my kids!
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