Mmmmm... sweet corn. We started getting it by the dozen, shucking, breaking in half, and then boiling in water with a 1/4 C of sugar added, a trick I learned just this year. Makes sweet corn just a touch sweeter. Roll it hot in butter and you have summery heaven on a plate. If I can find it and remember, I should pop back in here and offer that recipe for "Rosaneer Bread" from my Kentucky relatives. It's a fry bread that's mostly oil and corn, with very little flour, but the trick is to cut the corn fresh off the cob in three layers... two layers just won't do it... cut the tips of the kernals, then cut the middles, then cut it the rest off the cob. It helps make the corn milky and gives such a wonderful texture to the bread.
For Lughnasadh, our church group made "corn dollies" this year. (The image above is not my own creation!) Traditionally, this meant a doll made of wheat stalks, not corn, and the custom derives from the British Isles. Once would cut the fields from the outer edges inward and then collect the very last stalk from the center, considering that to have collected all of the magic, concentrated as they worked edge to middle. The corn dolly made from this sheaf would decorate the walls, be used for the February holiday, Imbolc, aka Brigid, and then just before the next Lughnasadh, it would be burned or buried (if the previous year's harvest was great) in the garden as inspiration for the following season.
2 comments:
This was a great article. That is also a beautiful picture of a Corn Mother.
I was actually lucky enough to have found a beautiful Corn Mother at a thrift store here in Memphis, TN about 3 months ago. She stands 10 inches tall and She is absolutely gorgeous. I paid $2 for Her.
Have a great week. Blessed be.
Thanks! Sorry it took me so long to notice this and get it published... I fell off the face of the bloggin' earth when school started. Memphis, eh? I grew up about an hour away from there.
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