Menu Monday: C Is for Herbed Roasted Corn

C is for corn...and it's a fruit, vegetable, AND a grain!  (Riddle me that, folks.  Riddle me THAT.)

I almost called it just a grain, but then I decided to fact check my facts, and I learned some things.  I was right--it is a grain, and it's okay to call it a vegetable.  BUT I did not know it was a FRUIT.

A fruit, y'all.  It's like that time my roommate Rose told me a banana is biologically a berry.

(Actually, Rosey may have been the first person to inform me that corn is a grain...way back when she took that botany class.  And I totally had to Google "study of plants" to recall the word "botany.")

What????  If you are like me, you grew up calling corn a "vegetable," but then we read a lot of nutritionism junk, and saw the light--it's a "grain."

But it's also a "fruit!"

It's a fruit of the plant because it is formed from the reproductive parts of the plant (SCIENCE!), but it can be classified as a vegetable because it can be harvested fresh as a plant to eat (SCIENCE!!), and biologically, since it is a dried seed-like fruit, it is a grain (MORE SCIENCE!!!)

See, all grains are fruits, but not all fruits are grains.

Oh my goodness, that LOGIC class I took senior year is paying off...IN THE KITCHEN!

So let's get back in there.  :)

HERBED ROASTED CORN

corn-on-the-cob

salt and pepper to taste

fresh herbs (5-6 sprigs per cob)

butter (1 T. per cob)

-Preheat oven to 410.  Shuck and clean corn of silk and debris if necessary.  Place each cob on a piece of foil or parchment.  Season to taste.  Top with butter and add fresh herbs at the side.  Seal corn in foil or parchment and roast for about 30 minutes.

You can choose to serve it with whatever.  We had ours with sweet-n-sour veggie stir fry and grilled peppers.  YUMMY!

EDIT:  I used thyme, and let me tell you, thyme and corn is amazing.  I've always liked thyme in green beans, but I wanted to try it with something else since some friends from work gave us a HUGE thyme plant.

What is your favorite veggie or fruit (or grain!) this time of year?

C is for CARROTS

Am I the only one who struggles to come up with healthy Mexican side dishes?  It seems like Mexican food is always served with some variation of the following:  rice, beans, pico de gallo/salsa, queso, and tortilla chips.  Often, Mexican food will come with lettuce, too, but I only eat that if I have ordered tacos or taco salad--something that uses lettuce.  Maybe it is just Mexican food in the South...

The short, stubby carrots are from the Farmers Market; they had amazing flavor.  :)

So I decided to do some research and came across a Mexican carrot recipe.  I honestly did not know carrots were part of Mexican food; I have never seen them in a Mexican restaurant that I can recall.  The reviews of this recipe were great, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Pickled Carrots

2 carrots, peeled and sliced 1/4-inch thin

2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

oil

5 bay leaves (I will probably cut this down a bit next time)

4 peppercorns (The same goes for these)

1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 cups vinegar

3/4 cups water

as many pickled jalapeños as you want

Heat the oil in a skillet and sauté the garlic.  Add the carrots and sauté for 2-3 minutes.  Add the vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorns, and salt and simmer for 5 minutes.  Add the water and jalapeños and simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

Maybe this is where I went wrong because I didn't let these cool and refrigerate them overnight before serving.  Warm carrots just sound so much better than cold ones.  Perhaps refrigerating them would have cut down on the spice because these babies were HOT.  But I have a feeling it would have only amplified the flavor.  I liked them but could only handle a small amount on the side of my rice and bean burrito.  Zach did not like them--he said they were way too spicy.  (He kept apologizing for not liking them, and I had to draw out what he didn't like; I told him I needed to know so I wouldn't make another spicy pickled vegetable next time.)  I will have to make them will less bay leaves, peppercorns, and jalapeños next time because I think this recipe is a keeper!  (I figure my husby can try them one. more. time.  ;)  I know my mama would love these because we used to keep a jar of peppers and vinegar in the fridge to sprinkle on greens when I was growing up.

Happy eating, folks!

C is for CHERRIES

I love cherry trees and cherry blossoms, but I have never been a huge fan of cherries.  But I think that is because I am just not used to them because I have found they are rather quite tasty.  They aren't as sweet as I would like; they are more tart than I thought they would be.  You always hear the phrase "sweet cherries," don't you?  I guess you also hear "tart cherries," too...  Oh, well.

Cherries, like every other kind of fruit (it seems to me) is high in vitamin C and fiber.  So, woo, Team Cherries!

I still have a lot of these in the fridge, so I am thinking I will need to whip something up...

C is for CUCUMBERS

Did you know the cucumber is a fruit?  Say what?!  It's true, y'all.  I did my research.  It's all in the same family as squashes and muskmelons (cantaloups).  I sorta knew that already, but it was nice to reminded of this fruit's roots.  (FYI...a banana is a berry.  One of my roommates took a botany class in college and taught us that.  I already knew a tomato is a fruit because that is our state's fruit!)  Sorry for the delay in posts, but we have been out of town eating good food that is not good for you (BBQ, homemade chocolate cake, sugar cookies).  Here's something we had last week before we left:

Anyway, cucumbers are high in Vitamins A, C, and K, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium.  I really should start checking to see what these things do, so....Vitamin A is very important for vision, immune function, skin and cellular health, bone metabolism, and antioxidant activity.  And Vitamin C is also essential to immune function and antioxidant activity, and it is an antihistamine.  Okay, that is all the science-y stuff I feel like covering.  Let's get to the good stuff!

I grew up eating cucumber soaked in vinegar and sprinkled with salt (and later pepper).  Once my freshman year in college, I made this delicious cucumber salad, but unfortunately, the recipe was in one of my mama's magazines that was lost.  After going on a cruise in 2007, I got into Greek salads because the fancy dining room served one three nights in a row, and it was soooooooo good.  I've made Greek salads at home, typically following a recipe as a guide.  And I really wanted to make a Greek salad this night, but it didn't quite turn out because I was out of feta, and the lettuce we bought from the Farmers Market had a few worms in it.  Now, they were dead worms, but that sorta turned me off from the lettuce.  (Thankfully, we didn't waste all of it.  We had already eaten some--hopefully, sans worms--right after we got it.)

So I used what I had.  I cut up my cucumber, sliced some onions, and chopped some black Kalamata olives, removing the pits.  Then I dashed a little Italian dressing over it and dug in!  It was soooo good!!  I hope I have inspired you to eat a cuke today.  :)