Corn Kernels Quotes

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Sometimes, a family is like an ear of summer corn: It might look perfect on the outside, but when you peel the husk away. every kernel is rotten.

though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preéstablishcd harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give hint no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Sometimes I think that if I had to choose between an ear of corn or making love to a woman, I'd choose the corn. Not that I wouldn't love to have a final roll in the hay - I am a man yet, and something never die - but the thought of those sweet kernels bursting between my teeth sure sets my mouth to watering. It's fantasy, I know that. Neither will happen. I just like to weight the options, as though I were standing in front of Solomon: a final roll in the hay or an ear of corn. What a wonderful dilemma. Sometimes I substitute an apple for the corn.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

This is why you're all kernels and I'm a major general. 'Cause you got corn silk in your ears.

Camille, if you could be any fairy-tale person in the world, who would you be?” Amma asked. “Sleeping Beauty.” To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely. “I’d be Persephone.” “I don’t know who that is,” I said. Gayla slapped some collards on my plate, and fresh corn. I made myself eat, a kernel at a time, my gag reflex churning with each chew. “She’s the Queen of the Dead,” Amma beamed. “She was so beautiful, Hades stole her and took her to the underworld to be his wife. But her mother was so fierce, she forced Hades to give Persephone back. But only for six months each year. So she spends half her life with the dead, and half with the living.” “Amma, why would such a creature appeal to you?” Alan said. “You can be so ghastly.” “I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been,” Amma said. “And even when she’s with her mother, she’s not really happy, because she knows she’ll have to go back underground.” She grinned at Adora and jabbed a big bite of ham into her mouth, then crowed.

Power surged through him, so fierce and scorching he thought his skin would melt, his guts would boil, and his head burst like a kernel of corn dropped into a fire. Pain and power, power and pain, he could no longer tell the difference. He only knew he wanted it, wanted to drink it in, soak it up, and claim it all.

A heavy, peppery steam spiraled skyward and the remains of our house spit and stammered like the last stubborn kernels of popping corn. Everyone was so sorry.

Planted, a single corn seed yielded more than 150 fat kernels, often as many as 300, while the return on a seed of wheat was something less than 50:1

This is why you’re all kernels and I’m a major general. ’Cause you got corn silk in your ears.

When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of the head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily. I’d know her head anywhere.

North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the Pyongyang Times through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as 'duck.' One evening I gave in and tried a bowl of dog stew, which at least tasted hearty and spicy—they wouldn't tell me the breed—but then found my appetite crucially diminished by the realization that I hadn't seen a domestic animal, not even the merest cat, in the whole time I was there.

is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Sometimes I think that if I had to choose between an ear of corn or making love to a woman, I'd choose the corn. Not that I wouldn't love to have a final roll in the hay - I am a man yet, and some things never die - but the thought of those sweet kernels bursting in my teeth sure sets my mouth to watering. It's fantasy, I know that. Neither will happen. I just like to weigh the options, as though I were standing in front of Solomon: a final roll in the hay or an ear of corn. What a wonderful dilemma. Sometimes I substitute an apple for the corn.

Tell me, Rui Díaz, if I were to give the King a very great treasure, would he withdraw all the Christians from this land?” Rui Díaz replied, “How much would you give?” Rui Díaz said that Manco then had a [large quantity] . . . of corn [kernels] brought out and had it piled on the ground. And from that pile he took one grain, and said: “The Christians have [only] found as much gold and silver as this kernel; by comparison what you have not found is as large as this pile from which I took this single kernel.” . . . Rui Díaz [then] said to Manco Inca, “Even if all these mountains were made of gold and silver and you were to give them to the King, he would [still] not withdraw the Spaniards from this land.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

A piece of homemade bread was buttered and then used to slather the salted ear of corn, thus, in true Italian fashion, creating two dishes out of one, the ear of corn being the first dish and the homemade bread (now saturated with the melted butter, salt, and sweetness from the buttered kernels) being the second. This may have been the single most delicious part of an already delicious meal. An act so simple it’s almost stupid. But no one I know does it, except my family. And, as far as I know, they are not simple or stupid.

To the untrained eye, the Wall Street people who rode from the Connecticut suburbs to Grand Central were an undifferentiated mass, but within that mass Danny noted many small and important distinctions. If they were on their BlackBerrys, they were probably hedge fund guys, checking their profits and losses in the Asian markets. If they slept on the train they were probably sell-side people—brokers, who had no skin in the game. Anyone carrying a briefcase or a bag was probably not employed on the sell side, as the only reason you’d carry a bag was to haul around brokerage research, and the brokers didn’t read their own reports—at least not in their spare time. Anyone carrying a copy of the New York Times was probably a lawyer or a back-office person or someone who worked in the financial markets without actually being in the markets. Their clothes told you a lot, too. The guys who ran money dressed as if they were going to a Yankees game. Their financial performance was supposed to be all that mattered about them, and so it caused suspicion if they dressed too well. If you saw a buy-side guy in a suit, it usually meant that he was in trouble, or scheduled to meet with someone who had given him money, or both. Beyond that, it was hard to tell much about a buy-side person from what he was wearing. The sell side, on the other hand, might as well have been wearing their business cards: The guy in the blazer and khakis was a broker at a second-tier firm; the guy in the three-thousand-dollar suit and the hair just so was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan or someplace like that. Danny could guess where people worked by where they sat on the train. The Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch people, who were headed downtown, edged to the front—though when Danny thought about it, few Goldman people actually rode the train anymore. They all had private cars. Hedge fund guys such as himself worked uptown and so exited Grand Central to the north, where taxis appeared haphazardly and out of nowhere to meet them, like farm trout rising to corn kernels. The Lehman and Bear Stearns people used to head for the same exit as he did, but they were done. One reason why, on September 18, 2008, there weren’t nearly as many people on the northeast corner of Forty-seventh Street and Madison Avenue at 6:40 in the morning as there had been on September 18, 2007.

Wild geese pair off for life. I never knew them to even make an application for divorce. The male guards his mate on the nest. As soon as the young hatch, he protects them from the side opposite the mother, keeping the babies between the parents. He will leave his family for her and for her only, but he will die in the front ranks for any of them....I have placed their bushels of corn around one of my mating pairs, and of the thousands of hungry geese that come here, none will interfere with these little plots to take even one kernel...When traveling in the air, the male Canada Goose leads the way, breaking the air for his sweetheart, who is quartering behind him, and his family travels next to her. In brief, he is one of the most self-sacrificing, godly-principled leaders the human eye ever beheld, and to know him is to love and admire him.

A look passed between Genevieve, Kaya, and I, a silent knowledge relating back to the warning Anansi had given us that Paine was growing corn here, recalling a vision I had not long ago about acres and acres of the stuff stretching on for miles beneath a moonlit sky, about so many lessons gleaned in the Divine Rite Academy as children regarding the “Devil’s Grain” and how to spot it and its many forms by sight and smell, so that we would always avoid it if it should ever reappear on this earth. That yellow sweet temptress. Its siren song was near impossible to avoid, even though I’d never once tasted it. But somehow I knew exactly how it would taste, how its rough grit would crunch between my teeth like grains of sand, as if it had been imprinted into my genes from so many ancestors going back thousands of years who were gluttons for those kernels of gold. We could drive it to extinction or turn it into a monster that would drive us to extinction, but it would always be a part of us, waiting for resurrection. I could tell by the way the women gazed at the platter of golden medallions that they were having a similar fight in their minds. Just one bite. One little taste. It wouldn’t be so bad. And then we could move on.

All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his “trotters,” as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him,—for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl,—wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance,—I never saw one walk,— and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time,—for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the top-most stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate;—a singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow;—and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various directions.

Corn Chowder This recipe is from Marjorie Hanks. She used to make it on the stove, but now that Luanne got her a slow cooker, she makes it this way.   ½ cup diced cooked ham (or 6 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled) 2 cups peeled, diced potatoes ½ cup chopped onion 2 ten-ounce packages frozen whole-kernel corn 1 can (16-ounces) cream-style corn 1 Tablespoon brown sugar 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce 1 teaspoon Season Salt (see Mrs. Knudson’s recipe on backmatter) ½ teaspoon black pepper 1 cup chicken broth   Spray the crock of a 4-quart slow cooker with Pam. Combine all ingredients in the crock-pot and stir well. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 7 hours. Yield: Makes 4 hearty servings.

Cheesy Spicy Corn Muffins This recipe is from Danielle Watson. She argued that it really isn’t a recipe since it’s not made from scratch, but we told her that didn’t matter.   1 package corn muffin mix, enough to make 12 muffins 4-ounce can well-drained diced green chilies (Danielle uses Ortega brand) ½ cup finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese (or Monterey Jack)   Preheat oven according to the directions on the corn muffin package. Prepare the corn muffin mix according to package directions. Add the green chilies and the shredded cheese, and stir well. Line muffin pans with a double layer of cupcake papers and spray the inside with Pam. Spoon the batter into the cupcake papers. Bake according to corn muffin package directions. Danielle says to tell you that if you have visiting relatives who don’t like any spice at all, you can substitute a half can of well-drained whole-kernel corn for the peppers. Yield: Whatever it says on the package and a little more.

1 can of whole kernel corn, drained 1 sweet onion, diced 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 2 1/2 cups chicken broth salt to taste 1/2 cup cream hot sauce to taste paprika or chili powder for garnish Directions Sauté the onion dices in the butter until they are tender and translucent but not browned.  Add the flour and stir and cook until a soft paste has formed but not browned. While still cooking, pour in 1/2 cup of the broth while stirring with a whisk.  Gradually add the rest of the broth, stirring to make the mixture smooth and not lumpy as if you were making gravy.  Continue cooking until the mixture is bubbly and has thickened.  Pour two to three cups of the liquid into your blender.  Puree the mixture until it is smooth.  Continue in batches until the entire soup is puréed.  Pour the soup through a strainer into a clean pan.  Press any pieces through the sieve with the back of a spoon.  Add the corn and cook for five minutes.  Salt the soup to taste.  Add the cream.  If the soup needs further thinning, add water.  Reheat, add hot sauce to taste, garnish with paprika or chili powder and serve. Cream of Mushroom Soup For mushroom soup, do not puree the vegetables as you do for many other cream of vegetable soups. Ingredients   1 pound sliced fresh mushrooms  2 tablespoons cooking sherry 1/2 sweet onion, diced 6 tablespoons butter, divided

Retired missionaries taught us Arts & Crafts each July at Bible Camp: how to glue the kidney, navy, and pinto bean into mosaics, and how to tool the stenciled butterfly on copper sheets they'd cut for us. At night, after hymns, they'd cut the lights and show us slides: wide-spread trees, studded with corsage; saved women tucking T-shirts into wrap-around batiks; a thatched church whitewashed in the equator's light. Above the hum of the projector I could hear the insects flick their heads against the wind screens, aiming for the brightness of that Africa. If Jesus knocks on your heart, be ready to say, "Send me, O Lord, send me," a teacher told us confidentially, doling out her baggies of dried corn. I bent my head, concentrating hard on my tweezers as I glued each colored kernel into a rooster for Mother's kitchen wall. But Jesus noticed me and started to knock. Already saved, I looked for signs to show me what else He would require. At rest hour, I closed my eyes and flipped my Bible open, slid my finger, ouija-like, down the page, and there was His command: Go and do ye likewise— Let the earth and all it contains hear— Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire—. Thursday night, at revival service, I held out through Trust and Obey, Standing on the Promises, Nothing But the Blood, but crumpled on Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling, promising God, cross my heart, I'd witness to Rhodesia. Down the makeshift aisle I walked with the other weeping girls and stood before the little bit of congregation left singing in their metal chairs. The bathhouse that night was silent, young Baptists moving from shower to sink with the stricken look of nuns. Inside a stall, I stripped, slipped my clothes outside the curtain, and turned for the faucet— but there, splayed on the shower's wall, was a luna moth, the eye of its wings fixed on me. It shimmered against the cement block: sherbet-green, plumed, a flamboyant verse lodged in a page of drab ink. I waved my hands to scare it out, but, blinkless, it stayed latched on. It let me move so close my breath stroked the fur on its animal back. One by one the showers cranked dry. The bathhouse door slammed a final time. I pulled my clothes back over my sweat, drew the curtain shut, and walked into a dark pricked by the lightening bugs' inscrutable morse.

When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of the head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily.

When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of the head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily. I’d know her head anywhere.

Shuck Corn Cleanly Getting rid of that silk can be tedious business. Slice off the stalk one inch above the last row of kernels. Microwave for two to four minutes (add time to this for multiple ears). Then gently shake and squeeze the husk (wear an oven mitten—it will be hot) until the corn slides out. The steam will separate threads from the kernels, and you’ll have a freshly cooked cob.

I had noticed the birds as I crossed the field but I just realized then that I hadn't heard a sound out of them since I had left the grass.  All around me crows hopped along, snagging dropped kernels of corn, their heads tilting to the sides so that they could keep a glassy eye on me.  It was damn strange.  Crows are noisy birds, always yelling at you like a rude construction worker whistling as women pass by.  Stereotypes, yeah, but based on fact.  Crows are never quiet.

Sometimes, a family is like an ear of summer corn: It might look perfect on the outside, but when you peel the husk away, every kernel is rotten.

By far the biggest portion of a bushel of American commodity corn (about 60% of it, or some 50k kernels) goes to feeding livestock, and much of that goes to feeding America's 100 million beef cattle

I really love being able to make a big pot of hearty soup for dinner. It’s a time-saver and the cleanup is always easier. This corn chowder is one of my family’s favorites. The East and West Coasts have their seafood chowders, but we prairie folk raise a lot of corn. No prairie cookbook would be complete without a corn chowder recipe. Serves 4 8 ears fresh corn, shucked 8 slices bacon, chopped ¼ cup (½ stick/55 g) unsalted butter 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped 2 ribs celery, finely chopped 1 yellow onion, finely chopped 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme 1 fresh or dried bay leaf 6 cups (1.4 L) milk 3 new potatoes (about 1½ pounds/680 g), peeled and cut into ½-inch (12-mm) cubes Salt and freshly ground black pepper ¼ cup (7 g) thinly sliced fresh basil or 4 sprigs thyme, for serving • Working over a large shallow bowl, slice the corn kernels off the cobs, scraping the cobs with the knife to extract the flavorful juices. Halve 5 of the bare corncobs crosswise, discarding the rest. Set the corn and cobs aside. • Cook the bacon in a large pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until crisp, about 12 minutes. Reserve 3 tablespoons of the bacon for garnish, leaving the remaining bacon in the pot. Add the butter, garlic, celery, onion, thyme, and bay leaf. Cover the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens, about 6 minutes. Add the reserved corn kernels and cobs, the milk, and potatoes. Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes. • Skim any foam from the surface of the soup. Discard the cobs and bay leaf. Transfer 1½ cups (360 ml) of the soup to a blender and puree. Stir the puree back into the chowder to thicken it. Season with salt and pepper and serve garnished with the basil or thyme and the reserved bacon.

Americans prize individualism—an outlook that stresses the moral worth and capabilities of each person, as opposed to systems that put faith in centralized, socialistic control. Ralph Waldo Emerson summed up this way of thinking in his essay Self-Reliance: There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

As the whole-grain food synergy study suggests, science doesn’t know nearly enough to compensate for everything that processing does to whole foods. We know how to break down a kernel of corn or grain of wheat into its chemical parts, but we have no idea how to put it back together again. Destroying complexity is a lot easier than creating it.

Daily" These shriveled seeds we plant, corn kernel, dried bean, poke into loosened soil, cover over with measured fingertips These T-shirts we fold into perfect white squares These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl This bed whose covers I straighten smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket and nothing hangs out This envelope I address so the name balances like a cloud in the center of sky This page I type and retype This table I dust till the scarred wood shines This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again like flags we share, a country so close no one needs to name it The days are nouns: touch them The hands are churches that worship the world

Thomas Jones, a Loyalist judge in New York, wrote that not “a stick of wood, a spear of grass or a kernel of corn could the troops in New Jersey procure without fighting for it.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

holding up a large plastic ear of corn, complete with individual kernels. “You could’ve been impaled on a cornbrator.

I bit the days off in rows, corn kernels that popped in my mouth and wedged between my teeth. Bite. Chew. Swallow. Again. Bite. Chew. Swallow. Again. I was a good girl because I didn’t poke holes in my skin (scars noted) or write depressing poetry (journals checked while we were in session) and I ate and ate. They stuffed me like a pink little piggy ready for market. They killed me with mushy apples and pasta worms and little cakes that marched out of the oven and lay down to be frosted. I bit, chewed, swallowed day after day and lied, lied, lied. (Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn’t sick; I was strong.) But staying strong would keep me locked up.

Wapsie Valley, known for producing red kernels. (The legend behind Wapsie Valley is that at corn shuckings, any man who found a red kernel could kiss the girl of his choice, and Wapsie Valley could turn an innocent gathering into a free-for-all.)

Warrior beckoned to her. “Loh-rhett-ah, you come, eh?” Loretta glanced uneasily at Red Buffalo. To her surprise, he moved closer to Maiden of the Tall Grass to make room for her. Blackbird dashed across the room and seized Loretta’s hand. “Keemah!” she cried. Loretta rose and let the child lead her to the circle. She shot a glance at Red Buffalo. He caught the look and smiled. She had the uneasy feeling he did so only for the benefit of Warrior and Maiden of the Tall Grass, and that he had a motive for this sudden turnabout. Oh, God. Did he hope that Warrior might leave him alone with her? “This Comanche will not eat you,” he said. “Be easy.” Not sure what to make of his mood, Loretta arranged her skirt around her and sat down, folding her hands in her lap. With Warrior sitting so close, she felt fairly safe. These last five days he had proven himself to be an even-tempered and kind man. Maiden of the Tall Grass, in her sweet, quiet way, ruled the roost. Loretta felt confident no one would harm her with Warrior close at hand. After the corn finished popping, Maiden removed the kettle from over the flames and set it in the center of their circle. When she whisked away the lid, the smell itself was almost good enough to eat. Once everyone else had helped themselves, Loretta shyly scooped a small handful, trying not to think about Amy and failing miserably. Red Buffalo snorted and dipped his hands into the fluffed kernels, his palms forming a sizable bowl. The next instant he dumped the mountain of corn onto Loretta’s skirt where it stretched across her lap. “Oh, my! I--” Loretta was about to say she couldn’t possibly eat so much. She swallowed the words and forced a smile. These people didn’t know Amy. She couldn’t expect them to understand her somber mood--or even to care. “Thank you.” Blackbird snitched a piece of popcorn from Loretta’s mound, and everyone laughed. Not to be outdone, Pony Girl, always on the move, toddled over and helped herself as well. “You see? It is good you have so much,” Red Buffalo said.

The flamethrowers scorched hundreds of spiders. They crackled and sizzled, many bouncing on the ground like giant kernels of popping corn as their abdomens burst.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Emmett recognized immediately that this passage from Emerson represented two things at once. First, it was an excuse. It was an explication of why, against all good sense, his father had left behind the houses and paintings, the memberships in clubs and societies in order to come to Nebraska and till the soil. Emmett’s father offered this page from Emerson as evidence—as if it were a divine decree—that he had had no choice.

For the next three weeks, Shockley kept up a furious pace. By late January he had come up with a theory, and a design, for a transistor that both looked and functioned differently than Bardeen and Brattain’s. Theirs had been described as the point-contact transistor; Shockley’s was to be known as the junction transistor. Rather than two metal points jammed into a sliver of semiconducting material, it was a solid block made from two pieces of n-type germanium and a nearly microscopic slice of p-type germanium in between. The metaphor of a sandwich wasn’t far off. Except the sandwich was about the size of a kernel of corn.

The regenerative movement limits traditional plowing and tilling, which expose buried organic matter to oxygen, hasten decomposition, and hurl carbon dioxide into the air. By contrast, no-till farmers punch thousands of shallow holes—no wider than a kernel of corn—into the dirt.

Each strand of corn silk is actually a hollow tube connected to the undeveloped mother cob. The pollen travels down the silk to the cob, where it forms a single kernel. Each kernel has its own silk attached to it. Someone up there thought of everything, because they even made it so the silk is covered with a sticky substance that catches the pollen. To make sure it doesn’t just blow away.

Therefore, we must invest in research that allows us to grow more healthy food and transport it more effectively. And please make no mistake: that includes accepting genetically modified crops, those engineered to include a trait in the plant that doesn’t occur in its wild form, such as resistance to insects, tolerance to drought, greater vitamin A production, or more efficient use of sunlight to convert CO2 to sugar—as an absolutely necessary part of our food future. With more efficient plants, we could feed up to 200 million additional people, just from plants grown in the US Midwest. 33 These crops have gotten a bad rap for being “unnatural,” although many people who hold this view don’t recognize that most of the food we think of as “natural” has already been subject to significant genetic manipulation. The ears of corn you see at the grocery store look nothing like the wild plant from which modern corn came; over the course of nine thousand years, the spindly finger-length grass known as teosinte was cultivated to evolve larger cobs and more rows of plump, soft, sugary kernels, a process of modification that significantly altered the plant’s genome.34 The apples we’ve grown accustomed to eating have a bit more resemblance to their small, wild ancestors, but good luck finding one of those ancestors; they have been nearly wiped off the planet, and that’s no great loss to our diet, since the biggest genetic contributor to modern apples, Malus sylvestris, is so tart it’s darn near inedible.

After all, it was unrealistic to expect Paul to be her twin, to think they would react the same way in every situation, always be in the same mood, though there was no denying she craved that. She must withstand all differences, no matter how wrenching and painful. For instance, Paul didn’t like corn on the cob. Of all things! How could a person not like fresh, delicious corn on the cob? And how could she not care? “I don’t like biting the cob and the kernels taste pasty to me,” Paul had told her. “Pasty? Then you’ve had really bad corn. Good corn isn’t pasty.” “Don’t get mad. It’s not like corn is your personal invention.” “But it’s impossible. Everyone likes it.” “People with dentures don’t like it.” “What are you trying to say? Do you have dentures?” “No! I’m just saying they are a sizable slice of the population.” “Not anymore. These days most people get implants.” “Not in rural areas.” “Okay, fine, whatever! But eating corn together, we’ll never be able to do that?” “I like other vegetables!” Paul practically yelled. “Corn is more than a vegetable, it’s practically a national icon.

To me Everything and More reads, rather, as a discourse from a green, gridded prairie heaven, where irony-free people who’ve been educated to a turn in those prairie schoolhouses and great-but-unpretentious universities sit around their dinner tables buttering sweet corn, drinking iced tea, and patiently trying to explain even the most recondite mysteries of the universe, out of a conviction that the world must be amenable to human understanding and that if you can understand something, you can explain it in words: fancy words if that helps, plain words if possible. But in any case you can reach out to other minds through that medium of words and make a connection. Handing out irradiated corn kernels to a troop of Boy Scouts and writing books that explain difficult matters in disarmingly informal language are the same act, a way of saying “here is something cool that I want to share with you for no reason other than making the spark jump between minds.” If that is how you have been raised, then to explain anything to anyone is a pleasure. To explain difficult things is a challenge. And to explain the infamously difficult ideas that were spawned in chiliastic profusion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Infinities, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Hilbert’s problems, Gödel’s Proof) is Mount Everest.

A piece of homemade bread was buttered and then used to slather the salted ear of corn, thus, in true Italian fashion, creating two dishes out of one, the ear of corn being the first dish and the homemade bread (now saturated with the melted butter, salt, and sweetness from the buttered kernels) being the second.

What was even more shocking was that the page was torn from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays—that book which his father held in greater esteem than any other. Near the bottom, his father had carefully underlined two sentences in red ink. There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

There’s nothing wrong with a savory pancake, but it should never meet up with a doughnut, any more than a cupcake should be frosted with pesto. The Pon de Monja is dusted with shrimp powder and filled with a fishy jelly studded with cabbage and corn kernels. It looks like the contents of a diaper

To the person who stole my place in line: I’m after you now. What is the center of gravity? The letter “v”! Why did the quiz show give away $10,000 plus one banana? They wanted the prize to have appeal. What do you call corn that joins the army? A kernel.

Love is only for the brave,” he said. “Frankly, I recommend you stay away from it. You are too soft to endure love for very long.” I disagreed with him, explaining that I had been in love numerous times in my life, and knew the pain and the ecstasy of the feelings. “That’s not love, that’s romance,” he said. “Love is like a mill,” he explained, “Love grinds you down. It cracks you open and breaks you out of your shell, so you no longer recognize who you are. You become like a fine dust that can be blown away by the wind if you are not careful. Love then mixes you with a dash of spring water and pummels you, kneads you, and then places you on a hot stone by the fire to bake, so that you can become like the corn bread in the sacred feast of the Inti Raymi.” “I’ve experienced that,” I mentioned to Don Manuel. I was thinking of my recent divorce, and how painful that had been. I had felt the heat of the fire and been singed by the flames. “You know little about love,” he said. “You are like a kernel of corn that got too close to the fire and exploded, like a canchita” (popcorn).

was like a crystal bowl filled with warm kettle corn. But when you lifted it up and checked the bottom, you could see a layer of burnt, unpopped kernels. The kind that makes you flinch from the unexpected bitter taste. The kind that may cause you to chip a tooth.

Most native plants are also higher in protein and fiber and much lower in sugar than the ones we’ve devised. The ancestor of our modern corn is a grass plant called teosinte that is native to central Mexico. Its kernels are about 30 percent protein and 2 percent sugar. Old-fashioned sweet corn is 4 percent protein and 10 percent sugar. Some of the newest varieties of supersweet corn are as high as 40 percent sugar.

Vegetables are one of the few foods that every diet philosophy agrees are healthy. That said, vegetables (particularly nonstarchy vegetables) tend to be high in insoluble fiber, which can irritate an inflamed gut. If you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), or other digestive disorders, you may benefit from reducing your intake of vegetables that are high in insoluble fiber. These include: •  Greens (spinach, lettuce, kale, mesclun, collards, arugula, watercress, and so on) •  Whole peas, snow peas, snap peas, pea pods •  Green beans •  Kernel corn •  Bell peppers •  Eggplant •  Celery •  Onions, shallots, leeks, scallions, garlic •  Cabbage, bok choy, Brussels sprouts •  Broccoli •  Cauliflower However, vegetables that are higher in soluble fiber and lower in insoluble fiber tend to have a soothing effect on the gut. These include: •  Carrots •  Winter squash •  Summer squash (especially peeled) •  Starchy tubers (yams, sweet potatoes, potatoes) •  Turnips •  Rutabagas •  Parsnips •  Beets •  Plantains •  Taro •  Yuca

But peanuts are hardly representative of the average food. Everyone knows—via “visual observation of stool samples,” to use the New England Journal of Medicine’s way of saying “a glance before flushing”—that chunks of peanuts make their way through the alimentary canal undigested. Nuts are known for this. Peanuts (and corn kernels) are so uniquely and reliably hard to break down that they are used as “marker foods” in do-it-yourself tests of bowel transit time*—the time elapsed between consumption and dismissal.

While we formed mochi cakes, the men pounded another batch of rice. When it was soft, they divided the rice dough until it turned nubby like tweed. They sprinkled the second blob with dried shrimp and banged it until it turned coral. Nori seaweed powder colored the third hunk forest green, while the fourth piece of mochi became yellow and pebbly with cooked corn kernels. For variation, the grandmother rolled several plain mochi in a tan talc of sweetened toasted soybean powder. She also stuffed several dumplings with crimson azuki bean fudge. Then she smeared a thick gob of azuki paste across a mochi puff, pushed in a candied chestnut, and pinched the dumpling shut. "For the American!" cried Mr. Omura, swiping his mother's creation. I looked up and he handed it to me. It was tender and warm. All eyes turned to watch the American. "Oishii!" I uttered with a full mouth. And it was delicious. The soft stretchy rice dough had a mild savory chew that mingled with the candy-like sweetness of the bean paste and buttery chestnut.

Acres of spice-covered almonds, blackberry and lavender honey, chocolate-covered cherries, their young saleswoman reaching forward with samples, her low-cut shirt selling more than fruit. The seafood shop, crabs lined up like a medieval armory, fish swimming through a sea of ice. Her ultimate goal was at the end of the aisle- a produce stand staffed by an elderly man who, some people joked, had been at the market since its beginning a hundred years before. George's offerings were the definition of freshness, corn kernels pillowing out of their husks, Japanese eggplant arranged like deep purple parentheses.

SNACK AND MEAL TIME Provide a chair that allows the child’s elbows to be at table height and feet to be flat on the floor. A stool or pillow may help. (Kids fidget less when they feel grounded.) Offer a variety of ways to eat food, e.g., eat pudding with a spoon, or scoop it up with fingers; use a spoon or a fork to eat corn kernels, or use both hands to munch corn on the cob; and spoon chicken broth, or lift the bowl to her mouth. Offer a variety of foods with different textures: lumpy, smooth, crunchy, chewy. Keep portions small, especially when introducing new foods. Let the child pour juice or milk into a cup. A tipless cup will help prevent accidents. The child who frequently overreaches or spills juice needs much practice. Encourage the child to handle snack-time or mealtime objects. Opening cracker packages, spreading peanut butter, and eating with utensils are good for proprioception, bilateral coordination, and fine-motor skills.

Corn Cupcakes with a Honey Brown Butter Frosting 1¼ cups flour 1/3 cup cornmeal 2 teaspoons baking powder ¾ teaspoon kosher salt 3 tablespoons sour cream ½ cup canned whole corn kernel ½ cup unsalted butter, softened 1¼ cups sugar 3 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Preheat oven to 350. Line cupcake pan with paper liners. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt. In a medium bowl, mix together sour cream, corn, butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry mixture. Scoop the batter evenly into paper liners. Bake 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean. Let cool before frosting. Makes 12. Honey Brown Butter Frosting 4 tablespoons butter, browned 1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1 to 2 tablespoons honey In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium-high heat until nut brown in color. Remove pan from heat, and pour butter into a bowl, leaving any burned sediment behind. Once it has cooled completely, add sugar, vanilla, and 1 tablespoon honey. Stir until smooth. If the icing is too thick, add the remaining tablespoon of honey, a little at a time, until frosting is at the desired consistency. Garnish idea: Sprinkle with 2–3 fresh corn kernels.

Stuffed Quinoa Peppers ½ pound light ground beef or turkey (optional) 1 ½ cups cooked quinoa ½ pack salt-free taco seasoning 6 red bell peppers, halved and seeded ¾ cup low-sodium black beans, drained and rinsed ½ cup finely chopped fresh cilantro 1 cup corn kernels 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1 can green chiles ½ teaspoon onion powder 1 cup diced cherry tomatoes ¼ cup light or fat-free feta cheese ½ cup shredded pepper jack cheese Preheat the oven to 425 ° F. If using beef or turkey, cook it with the taco seasoning. If leaving the beef out, then mix the taco seasoning in with the cooked quinoa. Place the bell pepper halves on a foil-lined baking sheet with the cut side down. Spray the peppers with olive oil (either from a sprayer or a store-bought can) and roast for about 10 minutes. Mix the beef or turkey (if using), quinoa, beans, cilantro, corn, garlic powder, chiles, onion powder, tomatoes, and feta in a large bowl. Flip the peppers, cut side up, and fill with the quinoa mixture. Place back in the oven for another 10 minutes and sprinkle the pepper jack on top for the last minute or so, until melted.