Corn pudding

We have been getting ear after ear of corn in our CSA box lately. It's okay, I guess, but not my favorite vegetable. In fact, it's not a vegetable, right? It's a GRAIN. But as far as corn goes, it's good and sweet, and Mike was kind enough to shuck and de-kernel all the accumulated ears. To use it up, I've made a variety of raw corn salads, none of which really hit the mark, and thrown it into soups and so forth. The one corn dish that we loved, though, was corn pudding, from the New York Times's "Temporary Vegetarian" column. This corn pudding is light, delicate, simple, and delicious. I made it with soy milk instead of regular milk.

Mike used to have a signature Thanksgiving dish that was similar, but then again utterly dissimilar. It consisted of, if I remember correctly, one box Jiffy cornbread mix, one can creamed corn, one can regular corn, one stick butter, one container sour cream (or cream cheese?), one bag grated cheddar cheese. If this sounds like a Paula Deen recipe, that's because it is!

So, this is like the anti-Paula Deen corn casserole. It would be a terrific Thanksgiving dish, although part of its charm is the completely fresh corn.

I've made a few things lately that were fine, but didn't wow me, so I won't bother to write very much about them. From Super Natural Cooking, a dip called Silik Pak that contains toasted pumpkin seeds and an habanero chili. It was pretty good, and I'd never cooked with habanero before, but my gringo stomach wasn't up to it. Mike liked it more than I did. Also, a roasted tomato and smoked paprika soup, that ended up way too oniony. Super Natural Cooking is among my favorite cookbooks, but you can't win them all.

I also made a crisp with little Italian plums, bananas, peaches, and apples, topped with a standard crisp topping (oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, some ground flax seed for Health, pinch salt, and olive oil--usually I use butter or coconut oil or nut oil). I liked it a lot; Mike wasn't wild about the texture of the banana. I'm going to try again at a later date. Both Orangette and the Chocolate and Zucchini author put bananas in their crumbles, so it must be good.