Now that I have twenty four pints of tomato sauce, made from fifty pounds of plum tomatoes (post to follow), I don’t want to see fresh tomatoes for at least a week. I kept the shopping mostly to essentials: corn, napa cabbage, yellow carrots, chinese broccoli, cauliflower, raspberries, and two thick-cut smoked pork chops. Not shown are the thai bird chiles and cilantro I had to go back for , because I’ll need them for two recipes I’m making next week.
While I was picking out the corn, I noticed an older woman who was methodically stripping away the husk from the top of each ear she grabbed, examining the end, and then depending on some internal criterion (is she checking to see if it’s corn, and not a really big carrot?), either adding the ear to her basket or tossing it back in the bin with the end exposed.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that,” I said. “It ruins the corn for the people who come after you.”
“Is that so?” she replied before walking off.
When I went to pay for my own purchase, the owner said “I gave up on getting angry about people messing up the corn, but I appreciate your attempting to teach someone some manners. I once watched a guy shuck an ear, take a big bite out of it, decide w he didn’t want it, and toss it back in the bin.”
They’re vegetables people, right out of the ground. If you need to eat pretty food, go to the Food Hole instead.