Thursday, January 15, 2009

USING CORN THE BETTER WAY

If you buy ears of corn from the market, choose bright, fresh looking ones wrapped up in it's corn husks. Corn husks really do make better wrappers than plastics, keeping the corn kernels fresh, plump and juicy longer.

If you need to buy a few ears of corn, ask the vendor to wrap the ears together with a rubber band, and put it inside the grocery bag you carry instead of a plastic bag.

Also, did you know that you can eat corn raw? It tastes yummy just off the plant. Don't have to cook it at all!

You can make a succulent salsa with raw corn. Add in bits of raw chopped corn, onions, chopped tomatoes, chopped up cilantro or chinese parsley, a bit of chopped chillies is a must for flavor, salt and sugar to taste, and a squeeze of lime juice to balance the flavor. Put it all in the fridge to let the flavor sit for about an hour. Eat it chilled just like that, or if you want to, you can have it as a side dish with some roast chicken or steak.

I prefer a simple raw corn dish drizzled with some melted butter and some raw cane sugar, some chopped mint leaves and a pinch of salt, served cold.

Eating a raw salad like this is great because it's really part of sustainable living. By cooking less, we save on gas. Less energy and pollution happens when trucks transport less gas to shops and houses. And when we use less plastic bags, we also reduce less pollution because less energy is used to create plastics that can not biodegrade, plastics that pile up in waste dumps, plastic that end up in bodies of water, which kills animals that swallow the plastic bags thinking the plastic was food.

By the way, corn husks makes a biodegradable plate scrubber. My mother-in-law occasionally buys corn you see. She will tear off the husks fold the husks with a rubber band and use it to scrub plates. And when the husks start to degrade, she just tosses it away. Dead simple. What a eco-friendly way to use up something that most people would just trash. She got the idea from a Chinese tv program about sustainable living.

Happy days to you.

Jasmin
Come join my "Eat Raw Food Today" facebook group

No comments: