The other night while dining at my favorite Chinese restaurant
I noticed that one of the veggies in my stir-fry was a tiny ear of corn. Even
as I ate the teeny ear whole my mind wandered to visions of Ton Hanks in the
movie “Big” as he tried to eat the kernels off of the mini ear. I wondered-- what do these itty-bitty
little ears look like while they are still growing? Being of an inquisitive nature, I just had to Google it.
I discovered the “baby” sometimes called candle corn (it
does sort of resemble a candle doesn’t it?) really is “baby corn. It’s the same corn that you eat at backyard
Bar-B-Q's in steaming bowls of butter.
And you can even grow it yourself.
As soon as the silk forms and the ear is fertilized you pick it! Believe it or not at this point the corn stalk is about 4 feet high! Let it stay on the mamma stalk too long
and oh baby it turns into a real ear of corn!!! Bet you didn’t know that.
My inquiring mind (and honestly I don’t work at Enquirer)
wasn’t satisfied with baby corn because when I got home and opened my fridge,
what was right there in the veggie bin to greet me but baby carrots? So back to my good friend Google to
discover that baby carrots are not really babies at all. Technically they are baby-cut
carrots. Yuppers! An enterprising California
carrot grower got a bit tired of discarding carrots because of slight
imperfections and figured out how to use an industrial bean cutter to cut
regular old adult carrots into lengths and then peel them! Voila, baby carrots!
Now, what can explain this? Stay tuned!!!
Well thanks for the corn- I knew some of the carrot!
ReplyDeleteHmm. And what are baby-bananas that they sometimes sell for sky-high prizes? Valerei
ReplyDeleteI knew about the corn and had just recently learned about them cutting up big carrots to make fake baby carrots (which just doesn't seem right!). I just can't figure out why anyone would want to take a baby corn (which I personally can't stomach even though I love corn) when they could wait and have a real cob of corn? What a waste! Nope. Never have understood it.
ReplyDeleteNow what will you tell us about grapes? ;)
interesting about the baby corn, I knew about the carrots.
ReplyDeleteI knew about the corn, but not the carrots. I thought they were some sort of dwarf variety.
ReplyDeleteYou always have such great information! I learn so much coming to this blog! I really thought the carrots, were baby carrots!
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of baby corn but I'm crazy about baby squash and skinny little green beans. Can't wait to hear what you have to say about the grapes.
ReplyDelete