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Sweet Corn is a product of 7500 years of cultivation and
experimentation. Modern Sweet Corn is a product of man's
intervention with nature. Strictly speaking, corn is not a
vegetable, but a grain. It is native to Central Mexico where
it was first cultivated thousands of years ago. There are
several types of corn; Flint, Dent, Field and Sweet among the
hundreds of types of corn...today we are describing the Sweet
corn which is a mutation of Indian field corn. Sweet corn
first appeared in the mid 1800's in the United States, but
major advances in its evolution have really occurred over the
last 80 years. Sweet corn has the ability to produce and
retain greater quantities of sugar and very recent research
has led to the super sweets-corn that have a gene that has
been developed to be ultra sweet, and not loose this sugar
through starch development. Before this time, corn just picked
from the field would immediately start to have its sugar turn
to starch...in the olden days, corn growers would have the
large pot of water boiling out in the field to get the corn at
its sweetest.
Today, there are over 200 varieties of sweet corn
available...The ones most common are the Yellow Sweet Corn,
Silver Queen Sweet Corn, and Butter and Sugar, a yellow and
white hybrid. Occasionally one can find White shoe-peg corn in
some specialty markets. This is a white corn without the
straight rows of kernels, but small kernels covering the ear.
Cooked corn on the cob has about 70 calories per ear. Corn
is a good source of vitamin A.
Purchase corn as fresh as you can find it and cook it on
the day you purchase it. Choose corn that is tightly wrapped
by bright light green husks, the silks brown and clean, stems
moist, and free from decay and critters. The kernels when
pierced, should give out a milky juice. Tough skin indicates
over-maturity.
Here are some really good corny sites:
http://www.kenyon.edu/projects/farmschool/food/corntyp.htm
http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/envirohort/articles2/sweetcrn.html
http://topaz.kenyon.edu/projects/farmschool/nature/corn.htm
http://www.ifsi.com/premiere.html
And for you travel nuts here is a cool place to get some
corn:
http://www.cornpalace.org/
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