Tuesday, September 06, 2005

what does it mean to dream of corn?

another food dream the other night. i was eating an ear of roasted corn. the kernels were burnt but only enough to caramelize 'em, so the smokey flavor of the carbonized part mixed with the natural sugars to make a sweetness that was nothing like cloying. it tasted good, and real.

it reminded me of clambakes when i was a kid, clams on the half shell with lemon and chickens and hotdogs and potatoes all cooked in a fire pit on the beach while we tore ass around the picnic site like wild indians and the grown-ups drank cold beer and laughed loudly at stories we couldn't understand.

later on when i was a teenager, we used to troop out to the same beach in convoys of cars, maybe 40 or 50 kids, and build huge bonfires. we'd buy gallons of canadian ace beer, which cost 75 cents back in 1973 (when you had to wait in line for what seemed like hrs to buy gas) and was made, i was told, from skunk cabbage. when you broke the seal on the jug, it smelled like a wet fart. on the top it was water, on the bottom it was like 20% alcohol -- no quality control. if you accidentally spilled half of your gallon on the beach, you didn't care: it was just that much less that you had to drink. we didnt cook; instead, we'd bring shit like cans of ravioli, which would inevitably get consumed cold out of the can in the morning after sleeping with four or five guys jammed into somebody's car to get out of the rain (and it _always_ rained). driving back home hung over, listening to the rascals or the james gang or john coltrane on frank santora's cassette player.

my sweetie brought home some ears of corn from the market the other day. she said the produce dude said they were wa-a-ay sweet. i understand they're genetically engineering 'em to taste that way now. ng. i don't care. now i just need to find a little hibachi to roast it on. yum.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home