Endless Summer (Or, How to Freeze Sweet Corn)

  

The Green Market at Union Square here in New York City is presently overwhelmed with giant piles of extremely fresh sweet corn. I keep buying it, because I grew up in northern Vermont with a mother who gardened but did not can. This meant that when there were fresh vegetables, we gorged feverishly. We knew that come november the party would be over and we would be back to frozen fish sticks and that lone head of broccoli, yellowing at the corner of an otherwise empty produce rack at the Grand Union supermarket. 

Even as a grown woman, I used to get a little panicky around fresh produce. Certain friends refused to go to Farmers Market with me, citing incidents involving me pulling them through the crowd, leaving in my wake horrified children and jugglers, calling behind me "THEYHAVELEMONCUCUMBERS!" as though it justified my rampage. I horded, I gorged, I practically wept when I had to dump something in the compost because I couldn't stay on top of my vegetable drawer. One summer, I was regularly coming home with so much food that I actually considered getting rabbits because the compost bin was so overwhelmed. Inevitably, disaster struck. During one era of simultaneous bumper crops of cherry tomatoes and carrots, I wiped out the entire population of my worm box. They weren't dead, exactly, but they were close to it. The sight of their pale, exhausted little worm bodies was the tragic wake up call that I needed. I had hit bottom.

Then, almost by accident, I discovered freezing. I know, tres moderne. But really, it works, and it works well. By buying fresh, locally grown corn and spending a Sunday evening packing and freezing, you can have fresh local corn year round. That means corn crab chowder in January and perfect corn and chile tamales in December, among other things.... Oh I could go on. Except that it's Saturday morning and I have to get myself to Farmers Market before that artsy lady with the big ugly blue hat gets there before me and buys all the best corn.

How To Freeze Sweet Corn

Below is my recipe for frozen corn, tried and true. It works equally well for lots of other produce, I recommend experimenting a bit in terms of blanching time. The trick is to freeze something immediately after it has been picked, so ask lots of questions at your farmer's market. I go the really small stands first, they often have less hands and less time and do their picking the morning of or evening before market. Really fresh corn has a very tight husk and moist silk. When you pick up very fresh corn, it should feel heavy and cool. If you peel back the husk just a bit and poke a kernel with your fingernail, it should pop, and some liquid should come out. 

You will need at least a dozen ears of Sweet Corn, freshly picked and shucked, Ice Cubes, quart size freezer bags, and a very handy tool known as a  "Corn Stripper", available here.

Fill a very large pot with water until it is deep enough to completely submerge a single corn cob. Next, fill another large pot or large bowl (or even a very clean sink) with cold water, and add a few cups of ice cubes. Cut the stems off of each husk so that the surface is even and flat. Using tongs, submerge each cob in the boiling water for ten seconds, then quickly transfer it to the ice bath. If the ice bath begins to warm, add more cold water and ice. This process is called "blanching", and it helps to preserve the flavor of the corn during freezing, as well as helping it to hold it's shape.

Once all of the corn is blanched, use your "stripper" to remove the kernels from the cob. A paring knife will work, but takes much more time and is a little dangerous. I like to hold the cob upright with it's stem (now cut so that it is flat)  and strip from the top down.

Vegetables expand a bit when frozen, so when you transfer the corn into freezer bags, leave a bit of room at the top. Then, add just enough water to the bag completely cover the corn, leave about two inches at the top, squeeze out most of the excess air, and seal. I like to mark the bags with the name of the farm that I bought my corn from, so I can remember which one to go to next year. 

oooo, look at this....

1st Anniversary: Gocco

My Husband, looking uber suave in Italy.

Or Paper.

My husband uses a lot of stationery. He writes so many Thank You notes that a friend of ours offered to sponsor his induction into the Junior League. I, on the other hand, still have a dozen or so thank you cards to write from our wedding, which was over a year ago. So, I knew that for our first anniversary I would drag my Gocco printer out of the closet and make him his very own set. I do design a fair amount of personal stationery, and actually really love doing it. I believe everyone should have their very own insignia, be it whimsical, traditional, or even a little off-beat. Usually, clients come to me with ideas for what they want, what creature or flower or icon best represents them, and I do my best to translate it through artwork, or in some cases embroidery, but for my husband... I decided not to ask him. In our home, after all, I am Senior Art Director.

I took a long walk along 8th avenue, lost in thought and looking for inspiration. If you are wondering what this creative process looks like, most of my friends can tell you that it looks a lot like someone wandering slowly along a bustling sidewalk, staring into space and looking as though they have just been grazed by a fast moving taxi-cab and are still in shock. I have a tendency to sort of... check out. A boyfriend of mine in college once told me that I was like "an incredibly smart person who has unfortunately been hit very hard on the head". Anyway, it seems to work for me, at least until I wander into traffic while staring at a dress in a store window or something.

Immediately, I noticed the squirrels. They are such savvy, alert little New Yorkers. A bit grubby, alarmingly cute, obsessed with survival for all but two weeks out of the year, when they seem relaxed and interested in each other. Trying exceedingly hard not to get squashed by a city that moves without sympathy for anything that stands still. What better animal to represent a nice midwestern boy trying to survive in the world of New York City finance? This was my guy.

and here he is again, enjoying his two weeks by the lake in vermont:

resources include gocco printer, blank envelopes and notecards from paper presentation, and very cool box from the container store. travel watercolor set and moleskin watercolor notebook, both small enough to fit in the pocket of your jeans.

A Children's Book Becomes a Wedding

Let me begin by saying that I was an intolerable bride. 

I tried to do everything myself, including trying to put my oldest and dearest friends into a dress of my own design that made them feel, as one of them put it, as though they "should be holding a giant lollipop".  It may have been the ruffles. I was so consumed with the desire to use my good friend Michael's beautiful little orange Kharman Ghia for my photos, that I ignored his cautionary warning that the stickshift occasionally popped out of it's socket, and drove it the three hours from his house to my venue in the middle of the night over dirt roads, stopping frequently to secure the shifter into place with two rubber hair elastics and an empty Skittles bag.  My cake, made directly from a sketch from white chocolate fondant made to look like peeling bark, cost more than my first car. By the time I heard myself utter the words " the delicate nature of dew covered Sally Holmes Roses" to this genius, I knew I was far past the turning point. I had turned my wedding into an elaborate design project, perhaps the most consuming of my career.

It started out innocently enough. I had fond memories of a book that I had loved as a kid called "Frog Went A-Courtin", which I suppose might have been the only visual reference to a wedding that existed in the house I grew up in. My parents had married young, built a geodesic dome, fled to Canada, rolled a volkswagen bus, and split before I was three. In fact, I think the only detail I know about my mother's own engagement was something I heard her say one summer afternoon when we were having a party and a college friend of mine showed up with a bag of fresh salad greens that she had grown and picked. "I brought fresh Mesclun" she said, holding up the sack of lettuce-looking stuff. "Oh God", replied my mother, "I haven't had any mescaline since the day I got engaged to Heather's father." No Mom", I heard myself say,  pointing to the enormous bag of lettuce "Mary brought salad greens. From her garden. NOT illegal hallucenogenics. SALAD greens."

Anyway, Frog Went A-Courtin was to my young mind exactly what  wedding should be. The illustrations, by Feodor Rojankovsky, mimicked the rural Vermont landscape that was were my surroundings exactly, with an eye for detail that was as close to the ground as a child's. As I consulted this book for design ideas for everything from my invitations to my table settings, I shoved that book under the bewildered noses of every person involved in the event. And while most of the responses were kindly meant to humor me, I think the results overall were pretty successful, annoyed bridesmaids aside. Here are some images from the book, which can be viewed online here, plus some shots of my invites and my wedding. 

 

I made the invitations on my dining table using my GOCCO printer, John Gruen, who also shot the pictures for Weekend Sewing, was my photographer, and the wedding was held at Blueberry Hill Inn, in Goshen Vermont. My birch bark cake was made my this wonderful shop in Montpelier, Vermont, and my dress was made by Ghost Tailor of New York City. And no, the idea of making the map (to my extremely rural wedding venue) that was included in my invitations "look like it was made with branches, with towns being depicted as leaves" was NOT a good idea. Several people never found it, and one couple drove around on dark dirt roads for hours trying to follow the scent of bonfire until the fear of running out of gas drove them back to the safety of their Inn. The chocolates are made by a company called Caffarel, but the source I used isn't selling them anymore.  Just as well, as due to the fact that I had forgotten to provide my wedding party with brunch the morning of, they were forced to feed on them. Its still sort of a sore subject.

 

Free Shipping on Mendocino!

Michelle at Green Kitchen just emailed me to say that HARTS FABRIC in Santa Cruz, California, has the Mendocino line in stock and is offering free shipping!

Weekend Sewing: I Finished My Book!

Phew. THAT was a lot of work.

I was chatting with Michelle at Green Kitchen about  the experience of writing my book, Weekend Sewing, and found myself sounding a little bit like a self help pamphlet, going on and on about being "pushed out of my boundaries" and "evolving as an artist", but it's really a pretty accurate way to sum it all up. Initially, I believed that writing a book about sewing would be familiar territory. I could design patterns, I could teach. I had a fabric line. Good to go, right? Not so much.

Here's the thing about me. Most of my life has passed without the benefit of supervision, critique, or authority. I was essentially raised by wolves, every job I have had has either involved a leadership position or working for myself (unless you count my years as a very bad waitress: I'm the girl at that cute little ski resort restaurant who brought out your dessert but forgot your dinner), and I purposely married the president of my own fan club. Even though I had worked as a designer for many years, it was mostly for my own company. Nobody told me what to do, which I guess I believed was because... I was always doing everything right??? Oh Dear.

Enter Melanie Falick, perhaps one of the best editors around today. Heading into one of our first days together, I expected to wow her without even trying. Instead,  I sat stunned and horrified as I listened to her sort through my fabric swatches and sewn samples, responding to her comments with the much more agreeable voice in my head: Too "cute"? I'm all about CUTE. Too Waspy? What the $%#@ is wrong with Waspy?? "enough with the gnomes" EXCUSE ME? gnomes are the new black. She tossed out words that I had never heard before, at least not to my face. 

"Eew". "Yuck". "Sister Wife". 

Panic set in then, and took a relatively strong hold. I cried a little. Wailed, really. And then, perhaps out of a sense of submission (and a bit of fear), I really started listening to her direction, and that of Brooke Hellewell, my extraordinarily gifted graphic designer, and things began to take shape in a way that made me really happy. Instead of taking every comment personally and responding defensively, I applied their ideas. The results were amazing, really. Me, but stronger. My voice, but so much more clear. Excited, I turned to other friends, asked their advice, and then actually TOOK it. My husband saw the change and HE began to offer me advice. OK, that actually landed him on the sofa once or twice, and hasn't come up since, but still. This was very new for me. Ultimately, I was pushed so far beyond my comfortable little rut that I could barely see the starting point... and I loved the results.

I realize now how lucky I was to have been given such direct and effective direction, and to have worked with the such talented people. Their talent and skill, however, would have done very little good had they never had the courage to tell me what they really thought, and had I never listened. 

OK, enough about that, here is the final cover and some photos of projects. The photos are all by John Gruen, an exceptional photographer and without a doubt the most relaxed person on this project.... not that the bar was set very high by the rest of us. Weekend Sewing will be in stores early next spring, and amazingly, to be notified when this book is available, you can sign up at Amazon.