One thing we strive to do at Coffey Grounds is to provide content for our subscribers that is original, personal and, ideally, not to be found elsewhere in the vast expanse of the newsletter universe. That is why we’re writing about corn today.
Corn?
Yes, corn.
Journalists are always looking for a ‘peg’ for their stories, some fact or event that makes the piece relevant and timely. Pegs are why we saw a slew of stories about the 80th anniversary of D-Day a few days ago, and why you will see climate-change pieces after a tornado strikes a place it isn’t supposed to hit. So here’s my corn peg: Tomorrow is National Corn on the Cob Day. Did you know that? I didn’t until I randomly came across it this morning. What better way to observe it than by sharing some, uh, kernels of history and facts pertaining to a summertime staple that conjures up feel-good images of picnics, county fairs and Kevin Costner walking through a field in Dyersville, Iowa.
Corn is a descendent of a wild grass in southern Mexico called teosinte, which was domesticated by indigenous peoples about 9 or 10,000 years ago, depending on which scientist you want to believe. It came to the attention of the European world in 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in what is now San Salvador, encountering an indigenous people known as the Tahinos whose staple crop was called “mahis,” which meant “source of life” in their native language. Mahis eventually morphed into the phonetic spelling of maiz, or maize, and before long it was on its way up the Mississippi River to distant points in North America, flourishing in the upper midwestern areas that would become Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska and Costner’s Iowa.
Americans now consume more corn than any other people in the world, roughly 12 billion bushels a year, according to Statistica, an outfit that tracks such stuff. There are 56 pounds of corn in a bushel, which means we consume 672 billion pounds of corn every year. Of course, a good portion of that goes to animal feed or the production of ethanol, but any way you look at it, that’s a lot of ears.
Now that your appetite is whetted, here are a few other niblets for your consideration:
Corn is one of the few food products that can be classified as a fruit, vegetable and grain.
The average cornstalk gets to about 8-10 feet tall, but the tallest cornstalk ever grown is 48 feet, two inches, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. A farmer/scientist in Allegany, New York named Jason Karl broke his previous mark of 45 feet three years ago, when he used an extremely tall green house, night lights and a genetic modification to grow a stalk almost five times the height of a traditional basketball rim.
A very vertical greenhouse
A typical ear of corn has about 800 kernels in 16 rows, according to My Dad’s Sweet Corn, a corn-centric website.
The number of rows of kernels in an ear of corn can vary from 8 to 20, but it is always an even number.
Apart from such food products as cornstarch, cornmeal, corn flour and popcorn, corn is also an ingredient in products ranging from cosmetics to fireworks to paint to antibiotics.
The U.S. produces about 1/3 of the world’s supply of corn.
Let’s finish with a quick true/false quiz.
1. True or False? It’s good manners to roll your ear of corn over a stick of butter.
False: It’s terrible manners, but it’s also the best and fastest way to butter your corn.
2. True or False: You can tell a lot about a person from how he/she/they eat corn on the cob.
True: Corn-eating technique offers deep insight into how the eater approaches life. A person who methodically starts at one end and eats a straight row or two of kernels until getting to the other end, when you almost expect to hear the ding of a typewriter, clearly values order and precision. The eater who takes a bite somewhere in the middle and then twirls the cob randomly, taking bites here and there (I plead guilty), is probably not someone you want doing your taxes.
3. True or False? The term “corny,” which means trite or mawkishly sentimental, probably originated with jazz musicians in the 1920s.
True: Jazz musicians, more than most, value originality and fresh technique, began to use “corny” to describe the work of artists who lapse into a predictable, overused playing styles that one might find in a backwoods barn or similarly countrified location.
4. True or False? The expression “can of corn” originated in baseball.
False. “Can of corn” is frequently used to describe a harmless, high fly ball (or any easily accomplished task), but is widely believed to trace its origin to grocery clerks in the 1800s who would use a stick or self-styled hook to tip a can off of a high shelf. The clerk would then catch it when it tumbled down and hand it to a customer. No big deal. Just a can of corn
.
A little corn education never hurt me none.
Who knew?
Very clever and Bruce won't mind, in fact I suspect he'll applaud.