Frivolous Fridays are the Orbit bloggers’ excuse to post about fun things we care about that may not have serious implications for atheism or social justice. Any day is a good day to write about whatever the heck we’re interested in (hey, we put “culture” in our tagline for a reason), but we sometimes have a hard time giving ourselves permission to do that. This is our way of encouraging each other to take a break from serious topics and have some fun. Enjoy!
The Big Secret Doctors/ Lawyers/ Plumbers/ Astronauts/ Tree Surgeons/ Airline Pilots/ Truck Drivers/ Chefs Don’t Want You To Know About:
Corn can be eaten raw.
You can cut corn off the cob and put it in your face, without cooking it. It’s delicious.* Corn salad is a wonderful spring and summer dish: it can be a side dish, or if you put some protein in it, it can be a main course. The flavors are simple and delicious (assuming you’re in a place that gets good produce — I love California), and because they’re simple, you can add a bunch of stuff to it if you like, without the ingredients getting into an argument. It’s super-healthy, it’s not expensive, and it’s pretty quick and easy to make and clean up. Also, it’s good warm or cool, so it’s good for potlucks and picnics.
The basic version we’ve been doing is corn, tomatoes, and avocado, with oil and vinegar dressing. When we do it as a main course (it makes a great full meal in a bowl), we add cheese, smoked tofu, beans, nuts, pepitas, or any combination of the above. When we’re feeling fancy, we use fancy olive oil and vinegar (we used jalapeno olive oil and mango balsamic vinegar the other night — yum), or fancy cheese (smoked cheddar with black pepper made it super awesome). You can also put other veggies in it if you like: it might be really good with red bell pepper or grated carrot. Meat balls, fish balls, moth ball, cannonballs… sorry, my brain went on a tangent there. But it’s also really good just simple: corn, tomatoes, avocado, plain oil and vinegar, plain cheddar cheese.
If you’ve done this and have variations to suggest, or if you try it for the first time and have interesting experiences, please share!
* (Corn is also delicious cooked, of course: it’s a different flavor raw or cooked, somewhat dramatically. A little like carrots.)
Having spent most of my life in places where corn on the cob is only reasonably priced for about 2 months of the year, I will point out that thawing frozen corn usually works fine for recipes like these.