Disclaimer: I did not create the amusing corn-eating-cat graphic.
Ideally, the way to eat sweet corn is to bring the water to a boil, AND THEN go pick the corn from your garden, shuck it as you cross the back yard, and drop it right in the pot to cook. I’ve only done that once in my life, back in the ‘70s on Kim and Jim’s farm, and it was a life-changing corn experience. But if you can’t do that, at least try to find ears that were still on the plant when the sun came up on the day you’re going to eat them.
It’s been years since we’ve had sweet corn fresh from the fields. I know we haven’t had any this millennium since we’ve never found a roadside stand around St. Louis and we don’t know anybody here who grows it. Grocery store corn is better than no sweet corn, and the farmer’s market corn we’ve had hasn’t been much better than grocery store corn. It’s a little chewy, a little starchy, but still good and that’s what we’ve settled for.
But enough about that for now. This is supposed to be about eating fresh sweet corn last weekend.
Around the time Nan and I were born, Nan’s parents bought themselves a nice floor lamp, very modern for its day. For over 50 years, the lamp sat in the Moore home, minding its own business, not causing any trouble. Then Nan’s mother moved and we brought the lamp back to our place to grace the floor next to my TV-watchin’, lap-top-usin’, book-readin’ chair.
We dressed it up a little, replacing the brittle old shade with a new one and adding a filial made from a beautiful blue purie shooter. For the first time in many years, the lamp was expected to perform on a nightly basis and its old circuitry just wasn’t up to it anymore. It had a three-level bulb, and, level by level, it stopped working unless you jiggled the lamp. One night, no amount of jiggling would persuade it to work. It was time to change the switch, and, since the cord itself was old and brittle, time to change the cord.
Easier said than done. It wasn’t as simple as snaking the cord through a tube; there were four right angle turns required because the lamp had a double-jointed swivel at the top. I finally figured out how to disassemble the whole thing down to its component pieces by unscrewing the heavy metal disk that served as ballast in the base plate. After much muttering and grumbling, Nan and I succeeded in getting the cord through all of the bends only to discover I’d gotten a loop of the cord trapped between the metal disk and the base plate and I stripped the cord and broke the wire while pulling it out. Naturally, we didn’t have what we needed to fix the cord in the house, so the lamp sat in a corner until we got a round tuit.
Last weekend there were thousands of baseball fans swarming around Downtown because of the introductory events leading up to the All-Star Game on Tuesday when Obama and his sharpshooters will no doubt completely shut the city down (except for pedestrian traffic) when he comes to throw something at Busch Stadium. As much as I enjoy seeing people spend money in my neighborhood, I hate trying to get around Downtown in a car when something like this is going on; streets are closed or jammed, and every now and then some yahoo blocks the entrance to our garage, leaving us trapped in or blocked out, depending on which side of the door we’re on when it happens.
We had every intention of barricading ourselves in our Fortress of Solitude all weekend. But I said I thought the recycling was getting full and we could probably make a quick dash to the bins, and Nan suggested going an extra few miles to Home Despot [sic] for the hardware we needed for the lamp and reward ourselves with a nice lunch somewhere. By the time we’d finished our shopping at the Big Orange Box, we were starving. OK, we weren’t actually starving, but we were both one of the 1 in 8 people in America who were hungry at that point in time.
I lobbied hard for Gioia’s Deli, one of my all-time favorites, but when we got there, we found they were on vacation (it’s a small operation). Nan remembered reading in Sauce Magazine that The Royale has a burger that got good marks in a recent He Said/She Said article. We’ve known of The Royale for several years; it was opened by a Friend of a Friend. But the menu always looked a little too New Age for me, so we’d never tried it. However, a highly regarded He Said/She Said burger is not to be dismissed lightly. We were in the neighborhood, and we went.
It was an altogether positive experience. The burger was called the Royale, a half-pound of Australian-raised Wagyu Kobe beef on a perfectly sized slightly sweet bun reminiscent of a brioche. If you wanted cheese on it, you can get a little extra frisson when you order a “Royale with Cheese.” Nan had a fish taco that was outstanding. The place has a cool hipster vibe, the specialty drinks look interesting, and there’s no smoking inside. I’m pretty sure we’ll be back.
Royale with Cheese
Fish Taco
And now for the dénouement. When we walked in the door of The Royale, we saw a copy of the Sauce Magazine that led us here. We didn’t own a copy, so we picked one up, perused it, and noticed an article about a place to buy fresh sweet corn, Keller Farms. They sell fresh sweet corn from four different stands just across the river in Illinois. Sold the same day it was picked. We went. It was good. We’ll go back. The kernels popped between your teeth like caviar.
And all because fifty years ago, Nan’s parents bought a lamp.
- Poppa
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