Corn, LOTS of Corn!

For the last two days I've been a corn cannin fool! 94 pint jars to be exact. Why so many? Cuz I feed a bunch of men with large appetites. And I don't wanna do this again for a long damn time.

Gotta give my poor pressure cooker some love. It has been runnin non stop for 2 days too. It's tired. Oh and hubbs, the boy, and the chickens, they helped with this procedure. 

Before the corn was ready, I began to get prepared and read all kinds of blogs and forum posts on what folks used to get the corn off the cob. In the past years, I just used a knife and I have to admit, lost some blood in the process. So this year, I decided to find out what kind of new fangled gadgets were out there for removing the corn. Bought 3 of them and here's my unofficial review of them.

#1~ This one is the Corn Cob Cutter Slicer Stripper Knife. Not sure of its maker but it sells on Amazon for $2.50. 

After reading other reviews on this thing, I learned that the best way to use this was to have a board with a nail sticking up on it and stick your corn on it and take the Corn Stripper and slide it over the corn. 

I made hubbs fix me up with one of these "nail in the board" thingies and put me a cob on it. Grabbed my Corn Stripper and started to slide it down the cob and didn't even make it all the way. The blade bent. 

Hubbs laughed and said, I'm not sure why you even bothered. Its flimsy as all get out. 

I threw it somewhere that wasn't in my way, and moved on to the next product.


#2~ This is The American Corn Cutter. It sells on Amazon for $11.90.

stock photo cuz mine was blurry

This would be handy if it had adjustable slots for the bowl. But it doesn't. And good luck finding one that fits this thing. So I just used the slots on the top of it and began to run the cob down and it was like trying to ride with a teenager just learning to drive a stick shift. Kept stalling. Yea, corn and plastic don't play well with each other. 

And perhaps I was using it wrong but the corn came off the cob in a heap of mush. Not to mention the high possibility of loss of fingertips. 

Yea, pass this one up too. 

#3~ This is the Kuhn Rikon Corn Zipper. Sells on Amazon for $11.99 

This one uses little effort and leaves the cob as smooth as a babys butt. Heres a YouTube on how to use it, and let me tell you, do it just like she shows you. I was holding the cob at first and using it that way and it cut too deep. This thing works very well when you have the corn cob in the right position and you don't push down too hard. 

Really, it will almost do the work for you. I did all 94 pint jars of corn with this thing. It made quick and easy work of it too. 

Buy this one. Buy 2 or 3, cuz it works and usually when something works, they get rid of it. 

Speaking of corn, I canned heaps of it over the last 2 days. And boy am I glad thats over! Not only for the fact that I don't have to do it anymore, but also, we have 2 years of corn at our disposal. 

For day #1, hubbs and son were both with me helping and it still took all day. We harvested the Peaches and Cream corn and did 48 jars of that. They only harvested part of the 2 rows and so when we got done with that at 7pm, he wanted to get more and I mustered up the sweetest voice I could, and told him that was plenty of that variety. 

For day #2, I only had the boy, hubbs had to go to work. So this day took longer. We harvested the same amount of G-90 corn and took it to the chicken yard and began to shuck it. 

The chickens LOVED it. I often do raw preparing of my veggies in the chicken house. They are my own personal clean up crew. lol

When we got done, we took the ears up to the house and brushed them with the corn brush, and I cut the kernels off with my nifty new gadget. I just cut them in the dishpan I bought exclusively for cooking and that worked out great. 

After cutting for a while, you take the corn to the sink and cover them with water and let the silks float up to the top and pour them off. I did this several times until I deemed them silk free enough.
On getting all the silks off the corn cob: It's an impossible task, right? Some inevitably ends up in your mouth. Just shoot for 95%.
Corn......the natural food that also flosses your teeth! :))
Then we put the corn in the jars loosely. Seriously, just toss the corn in there till you have one inch head space. If you pack the corn in there, you won't be able to put enough water in. (Don't ask me how I know that. It's not pretty.) It took me 3 good sized cobs plus just a little more, to fill each pint jar. I know this because hubbs asked me to find out how many it took when I told him to go get me more, so I could complete a canner full of jars.  

Put 1/2tsp of canning salt in, or not, fill it up with water to 1/2 inch headspace and adjust lids and rings and put them in the pressure cooker/canner for 55 mins. 

after all day of this, we made it to 10:30pm when I removed the last of the pint jars from the canner. 

Here's a pic I snapped yesterday,

This is just some of them, there's 94 of these bad boys. Would have been 96 but the pressure cooker ate 2 of them. 

Random Harvest Pics! 

While the pressure cooker was doin its thing, the boy and I went out to the garden and found some goodies! 

Here we have Eggplant, Banana Peppers, Black Tomatoes, and Bell Peppers. 

The Banana Peppers I canned just like this.  This is my first time canning Banana Peppers, hubbs is excited about these. I hope all went well. 

The Bell Peppers, I just cut them up in chunks and put them on a cookie sheet with wax paper and put them in the freezer overnight and then this morning, I put them in a ziploc bag and sucked the air out of them. This way, they won't be all stuck together and I can take out as many or as little as I want. These will be good for use in random meals. 

The Black Tomatoes were gone last night. The boys just sliced them up and took them in and ate them while watching the latest M.A.S.H rerun. I have to admit, Black Tomatoes are the best table tomato EVER. I can't blame them for eating them like a snack. Better than chips I guess. 

The Eggplant I'm going to make for supper sometime this week. I haven't decided what recipe I'm going to use for it yet. Y'all got any favs? 

Yes, over these last 2 days, I have shamelessly neglected feeding my family. Heres how that conversation went: 

Hubbs: Are you fixing supper? 

Me: (as im trying to refrain from shooting fire out of my eyesockets) No. 

Hubbs grabs my son and went to town and ate. 

Me: Yea, good choice. 

It's been a very busy last 2 days, we are all pooped, but I have a new gadget I would remove arms over anyone trying to take from me and I have more food in the cellar. And a special bonus: No blood loss! 

TTFN

Melissa