Creamed Corn... a religious ritual

Putting up creamed corn is a religious ritual in my family. We would pull the corn early in the morning. It had to be at just the right stage of growth, not too tender (boiling ear stage) but not too starchy. The quicker you process the corn after pulling, the sweeter the end product. Then we would sit under the pear trees to shuck and silk. Silking corn involves brushing the tiny strands of silk from between the rows of kernels. Good shuckers can strip almost all the silks away making this process much easier. After shucking and silking, the ears went to the sink to be washed. Then we draped sheets over the sink wall and window, covering the surfaces most likely to be spattered with wet gooey corn starch.
There are two ways to prepare creamed corn. One school, the old timers, use a knife to cut the kernels off and then scrape the starch off with the edge of the knife blade. This way produces distinct corn kernels. It also takes a LONG time. My grandmother preferred this way. Our way used a tool, a scraper, with a curved saw tooth blade to rip the kernels open, and a curved straight blade to scrape the cob. Two passes over these blades would leave the cob clean. Both methods leave the workers and the kitchen covered in sweet corn starch splatters.
After the corn is scraped into a dish, it must be cooked for a period of time to kill the bacteria that would cause it to spoil. The old way involved standing over pots on the stove, stirring continuously to keep the starch from sticking and burning. It was hot, sweaty work. The new method of cooking uses the microwave for blanching and is much less troublesome. You cook in smaller batches but you do not have to stand over it. You only stir once or twice as it cooks. Then the corn is cooled rapidly in ice water before it is boxed up for the freezer.
As teenagers, my sister and I spent long hours shucking, silking and scraping the beautiful ears of Silver Queen corn that daddy grew for us. Then as young mothers, we would come home every summer to can and freeze the produce from daddy’s large garden. Mama would leave for work and we would go to work in the garden and the kitchen. Our young children played as we worked and the process we had learned as children now provided food for our families. Creamed corn was always the messiest, most time consuming process when compared to canning tomatoes or beans. But creamed corn was liquid gold, and a treasure in the freezer for the table.
You cannot buy creamed corn anywhere that comes close to the real thing. Unlike other canned or frozen products, corn requires the particular attention that large scale processing cannot provide. The taste of commercially prepared creamed corn, whether it is that canned concoction or the frozen starchy kind, does not come near the delightfully sweet creamy taste of pure corn, no sugar added or starch, just plain corn with a little butter. It is gustatory heaven for me. So when you come to my house and I serve you creamed corn, you know I love you. I don’t feed my creamed corn to just anybody. It is too much hard work to be wasted.
Early Saturday morning, mama, Michael and I went to the farmer’s market. We bought three bushel bags of sweet corn from our favorite farmer. Then we came home and the ritual began again. With David and Dianne’s help, we put up thirty eight boxes of corn. It was a sweet heavenly hard working day.
It occurs to me that my life has been lived like the creamed corn process. Every now and then, something happens that rips the top off my soul and all that is in me spills out. Sometimes it is illness or death. Other times it is just monumental screw-ups of my own devising. I am torn asunder. If I can just pay attention, not run away from the pain, transformation and transcendence can make me a new creature. Like the corn on the cob that passes over the knife blade, I can become a new creation that is richer, sweeter than I was before. Like the creamed corn, it has taken and will continue to take, repeated passes over the blade, so that I might grow and change, becoming more completely who I was created to be. Nothing is lost. All is transformed. Jesus said we would gain our lives if we were willing to lose them. Making creamed corn and living for sixty one years has taught me that is true. Thanks be to God.