A Simple Cornversation

By Amy Baranski

One of my daily homesteading tasks which I so proudly announced to the world is making meals, mostly from scratch. You think this would help promote a more healthful diet. In my case, I'm eating popcorn everyday for lunch. My kernels are organic purchased from the co-op.

It's a whole-food right?

Perhaps all the years I spent working concessions at ACT III theaters (now Regal Cinemas) buttered me up for this daily challenge. Rotating my oil selection is just, well, the salt on the corn.

My in-laws like the popcorn. It's sort of a family affair--one of those quirks you come to love about the strangers you meet up with on holidays. I have not been married long.

They hail from the Midwest. Corn land.

Last winter, or spring, (it gets confusing in the NW), I watched King Corn, a documentary about two college fellers who head back to their "ancestral" home of the Midwest to grow and track a whole acre of corn! Their raison d'être is, and in no other words, corn. Just like their hair and other bodily samples, which they had a scientist test. Most of what we eat derives from corn. The film is worth watching, but hardly groundbreaking.

I have not consumed a whole acre of corn, this month. I feel, however, a real sense of shame after I finish each batch. I religiously lick my fingers and hurry to place the bowl in the sink before the urge to stick my face in it and lap up the remaining pool of salt and butter overtakes my good senses.

I don't think this counts as cooking from scratch.

Yet I keep doing it.

It's such an enjoyable experience. Four simple ingredients: oil, salt, butter, and corn. It's a wonder I haven't done this everyday.