Corn - Sweet
In the late 1400's, corn was discovered in Cuba, and corn pollen grain was identified 200 feet below Mexico City and identified as 80,000 years old. Corn classifications include: dent corn, flint corn, flour corn, popcorn, sweet corn, baby corn, waxy corn, and pod corn. Dent corn is the major type cultivated in the US, and was the most important plant cultivated in America. Early North American expeditions show that corn growing areas extended from southern North Dakota southward to Argentina and Chile, westward to Kansas and Nebraska, and northward from Mexico to Arizona, New Mexico and the southern part of Colorado. The development of the US Midwest was closely tied to corn cultivation in the 19th century - woodlands and grasslands were cleared for corn growing in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio and neighboring states.
In the late 1800's, the US grew over 60 million acres of corn, and within 20 years the acreage increased to 95 million - the largest acreage in the US was over 110 million acres recorded in 1917!
Sweet corn is one of the most cherished vegetables - nutritionally, sweet corn provides protein, potassium, dietary fiber and carbohydrates. White, yellow and bi-color corn varieties are available, as well as baby corn, which is mostly available year-round. Always buy fresh sweet corn - bright green exterior with fresh silk - as corn loses its taste, nutrients and reverts to starch with age. Today's sweet corn was discovered in the late 1700's in an Iroquois village along the beautiful Susquehanna River in central New York. It did not become popular as a food for about 100 years when sweeter varieties were developed. White corn (silver queen) is deficient in vitamin A, and yellow corn contains a good deal of vitamin A. The National Garden Bureau celebates the new millennium as "The Year of the Sweet Corn", and found the origin of corn or maize to be in Mexico. Teosinte, a wild grass, is the ancestor of all know corn species. Teosinte still grows wild in remote areas of Mexico and Guatemala. Corn is dependent upon us for survival, as it needs to be removed from the husk to expose the edible kernels.
Corn husk masks covered Native American people while they danced - waving greens stalks over their heads, they sang the praises of corn, thought to be a gift of the gods. They called corn, squash and beans "the three sisters" as they planted these items together to form the nucleus of their diet.
Early corn was thought to be similar to oats and barley as each individual kernel was covered in a husk. Corn today is the second most plentiful grain grown in the world, with rice first and wheat third. Corn in the human food chain is used for cereals, flour, corn meal, sweeteners, oils and starches. Non-food uses include dyes, paints, chemicals and automobile fuel.
As a delicious part of the seasonal harvests, sweet corn is being harvested in the Southern US, and although we have a few months before our local harvests begin, you can ready your grills because this is the time to begin enjoying the fabulous flavors of fresh sweet corn.