Three Ears, A Nose, and A Catface

Hubby snapped this picture while I was preparing the rest of our dinner. Corn shucking is one of his unofficial, but appreciated duties.

Friday night was corn night. I picked my first three ears. Now I know I was a little early, so I'll give them some more time before picking anymore. The two bigger ears were nicely filled out, but the tips still seemed immature, so I think they could have gone longer. The third ear, was small and I knew that, but picked it anyway. What can I say, I couldn't wait anymore. The corn was delicious, tender. It was picked and minutes later, slipped into the boiling water.

Corn really doesn't need much cooking. The more you cook it, the tougher it gets. Not to toot my own horn, but I've often been complimented on my corn cooking. The secret, I cook it for six minutes. That's all you need. I dare say, you could even do less! But I've been doing it for six minutes for so long and getting good results, that I'm going to stick with it.

Since this was our first serving of corn from the garden, I cooked it simply, only boiling it and eating it off the cob with butter and a little salt. I think my favorite method for cooking corn is on the grill. Grilling seems to enhance the flavor. Try squeezing some lime on your corn before eating, it's really tasty.

Here's a funny little tomato I've been watching in the garden. He's got a nose! I had one with a nose like this last year too. Unfortunately, he got tomato-napped by a critter before he ripened. I decided not to take a chance this time and photographed him while at the blushing point.

This nosy little tomato is from my mystery plant. At least I can get some entertainment out of this wrong plant.

Catface? This doesn't look like my cat's faces. They're cute and this is... well... not pretty. I don't know who coined the term catfacing, must not have been someone owned by cats, but that is what they call it when tomatoes (or other fruit) turns out deformed like this. It's due to environmental factors like low temperatures during pollination or self pollenization (tomatoes). Some varieties are more prone to it. It's not something you can control. So don't worry about it. The tomato is still edible and still tasty. You just have to do some fancy cutting. You don't really want to eat the leathery brown parts. Use these tomatoes for your salsa or bruschetta, where you'll be dicing them anyway.

Catfacing can look even more contorted than this Paul Robeson tomato. Thankfully, not all of the tomatoes on this plant are catfaced.