Second Planting for Green Corn
Our green corn season lasted about ten days, when the grain, though not yet ripe, became too hard for boiling green.
To provide green corn to be eaten late in the season, we used to make a second planting of corn when June berries were ripe; and for this purpose we left a space, not very large, vacant in the field. In my father’s family this second planting was of about twenty-eight hills of corn. It came ready to eat when the other corn was getting hard; but it often got caught by the frost. Nearly every garden owner made such a second planting; it was, indeed, a usual practice in the tribe.
Cooking Fresh Green Corn
Our usual way of cooking fresh, green corn, was to boil it in a kettle on the cob.
Fresh, green corn, shelled from the cob, was often put in a corn mortar and pounded; and then boiled without fats or meat. Prepared thus, it had a sweet taste and smell; much like that of the canned corn we buy of the traders.
Shelled green corn, in the whole grain, was also boiled fresh, mixed with beans and fats.
Roasting Ears
Green ears were sometimes roasted, usually by an individual member of the family who wanted a little change of diet. The women of my father’s family never prepared a full meal of roasted ears that I remember; if any one wanted roasted, fresh, green corn, he prepared it himself.
When I wanted to roast green corn I made a fire of cottonwood and prepared a bed of coals. I laid the fresh ear on the coals with the husk removed. As the corn roasted, I rolled the ear gently to and fro over the coals. When properly cooked I removed the ear and laid on another.