The weather cooperated enough that we were able
to harvest sweet corn on Farm day. Yay. The tomatoes have gone slightly dormant with
the heat. And for literally two minutes we got a rain storm. A two
minute downpour that soaked the parking lots and teased everything else
desperate for rain. But those are just the little details. Here's the big adventure we had at the farm. While checking the organically grown, you know it's organically grown if there is evidence of pests having nibbled, but I digress, corn, & found something.
When I say she found something, I don't mean something innocent, or cute, or ordinary. I mean she found SOMETHING. As you have already correctly judged from the pictures she found something nasty ugly. I've seen this stuff call corn smut. And I've shunned it like the plague that it appears to be. I believe my childhood dreams were haunted by this corn monstrosity many, many nights.
But, get this, the farmer begins educating us on what corn smut is, and actually tells us she's eaten it before and it's tasty. Okay. I'm a major mushroom fan and this kind of piqued my interest. It's edible? Oh, yes, it's a delicacy in many parts of the world. She pulled one off the corn and showed us that it indeed looked like a mushroom under the black, oozy looking covering. So. I tasted it. I took a bite right out of it. And it's good. Tasty, mushroomy. And I am able to, 36 hours later, type this without hallucinating or stumbling around any more than usual in my words. I looked it up on wikepedia...why do I always go there? Anyhoo, I did. And here's the link to Mexican Truffles i.e. corn smut.
I wouldn't try this with non-organically grown corn. But, hey, how often do you get a chance to break off a hunk of ugliness and take a big bite? You only go around once.
