Corn and Airplanes

I know I’ve been neglecting all of my internet friends out there.  We’ve been so busy preparing for this vacation…that we need a vacation!

So many things need to be done to get the kids ready, and of course the house ready as our family is coming to watch the kids at our house instead of moving the kids to their house.  Well, our house is Knut’s parent’s last house, so it’s not exactly like a foreign place to them.  However, there’s a bit of the intimidating factor that my mother is 10 times the housewife I am, and even though she has not put this pressure on me, I feel as though it should be much cleaner than it usually is for their stay.

Then there’s the whole corn situation.  The farm’s sweet corn which is planted just for the farming families, (and all of their families…and usually a ton of friends;  one pass of the planter plants an awful lot of sweet corn) anyway, the sweet corn is starting to ripen.  Sweet corn is a big deal, in case you didn’t know.  If you have ever eaten at my house, we have probably served you my homemade creamed corn (which let’s be honest, is more of a dessert than a healthy side), and if you are my mom, you request it at every visit.

We may be coffee snobs at our house, and beginning to be tea snobs, and certainly we’re tomato snobs (once you eat off the vine, it’s really hard to go back to the paste-y white centered ones), as we have been spoiled to the point of not wanting to settle for second best in these certain areas.  However, nothing surpasses the snobbishness in our house when it comes to corn.  The first time my kids had corn at a restaurant they spit it out.  A separate time we were at a community picnic that served corn on the cob and my kids tossed theirs in the trash, saying it was only fit for pigs.  Now, they didn’t say this loudly, only in a whisper to Knut or I, to which we nodded in agreement.  They do have good manners, I promise.

Yes, we are corn snobs.  When I say we love our corn, I mean we love OUR corn.  Everyone else’s corn tastes terrible.

It’s sweet corn season, which means we need to husk, shave, bake, and freeze our corn supply for the next year.  Then we realized that our extended family would be doing this process while we were on vacation.

Now, that’s a scary thought: no corn in our freezer for the upcoming year.  I certainly couldn’t buy corn this winter.  No one in my family would eat it.  So instead of skipping Hawaii, we’ve decided to take the first round of this sweetcorn, and husk, shave, bake, and freeze it early by ourselves.  We’re still having corn on the cob for supper about every night, and that’s the really fun part about sweet corn season.  It’s hard to know that we’re leaving for that.  Well, we’ll be leaving right around the time that corn on the cob is getting slightly old.  Very slightly.

The whole corn preserving process actually went really fast, even though it was just us.  Knut’s brother and family came over near the end, but at that point we were chasing kids around the yard more than husking.  I told Knut to pick a few extra husks so that I could make a couple of batches of corn chowder for my freezer.  I’m hoping to already start some baby stock-up.  I told him I needed about 10 extra ears.  Well, when all was said and done, there were about 45 extra ears, and that presented a bit of a problem.

This year I made 6 pans of creamed corn, as last year’s 5 pans was about right for the year, and our family is eating more as they’re growing so fast so I added on a pan.  So the next time I was at the store, I picked up ingredients for lots of corn chowder.  I ended up making 5 batches (instead of my planned 2x batch) of a modified version of the Pioneer Woman’s recipe from her cookbook I got not too long ago.  5 batches was a bit bold, since I’d never once made the recipe before.

My mother-in -aw makes a fabulous corn chowder, and she has given me her recipe, but mine never turns out the same.  She said that’s just her “base” recipe and she heavily modifies her as she cooks.  I do that too, but I wish she had what she does written down.  The pioneer woman’s recipe (in her cookbook: The Pioneer Woman Cooks…which is my current favorite cookbook that I don’t think will be de-throned any time soon unless I buy her other cookbook) seems to be the closest I can find to what my mother-in-law does, except she adds some peppers and such.  So I eliminated the peppers, and put my own spice spin on it as well.  I hope it’s good, because we now have a lot of it. 

Even then, I didn’t use all the corn Knut picked.  I still have 12 ears in my kitchen.  I ran out of bacon, broth and cream, though, so I can’t make any more chowder.  We’ll probably eat them at the lake tomorrow.  You know…cleaning the house from top to bottom, getting the kids ready for us to leave, getting us ready to leave, doing the corn, keeping up with the green beans in the garden…all of that was getting rather boring so we’re taking the kids out to the lake this weekend.  We also have church and a wedding reception to go to as well, just in case we haven’t made our schedule tight enough.  I’m thinking, if I’m going to clean my house, than we better remove all of our children for as long as possible so it stays clean…for a little while.  That has to be the upside to all of this.

I’ve been busy at nights writing up instructions and routine lists for our babysitters/house sitters/dog sitters/chicken sitters (aka Knut’s parents).  I’m looking at our itinerary and the number of times that Knut and I will be taking off and landing in an airplane. I remember how much I hate flying.  My dad was a pilot, and ironically enough, my step-dad is a flight instructor, and I must have flown on 4 different planes (counting lay overs) every year for my whole childhood.  I spent so many hours in airports during my lifetime.  Hours, and hours, and on occasion: days.  I should be used to flying, but I haven’t flown now in about 4 years to be exact, and I’m about to fly a lot of planes because we’ll have a few stops.

We’re flying over an ocean too.  I hate flying over oceans.  I love visiting places across oceans, but I hate the actual flying over vast bodies of water.  I’m pretty sure a big boat wouldn’t be much easier for me either. I hate the feeling of take-off.  I hate the feeling of landing.  Not only that, I have never left my kids for this long.  A whole week is a long time in Mommyland.  Perhaps that’s why it’s good that we’re so busy now.  It’s preventing me from writing yet another list called: “Things I want my children to know just in case their parents die in a plane spiraling out of control into an ocean.”  The thought actually brushed past my brain that I should write a letter to each of my kids just in case our plane crashes.

Don’t laugh at me.  I know other mothers experience this fear of leaving their kids because I’ve had conversations about it.

I also have the same problem going to knitting night.  True story.  Something about driving around in an empty van creeps me out, and makes me wonder what would happen to my kids should I die in a car accident.  My mind never thinks when they are in the van with me “what if we all die!?!”  It’s just when I’m alone.

This is always, always a sign that I haven’t had enough of a break from the kids and have convinced myself that they cannot survive a moment without me.  It’s this pseudo-Savior complex I call it.  All they need is God.  I’m just gravy.  Those are the facts.  I tend to put myself in the center of it all, though.  When I have these irrational fears, I pray, and then make myself go anyway.  In fact, going is the cure for my paranoia.  It always has been.

I will not let fear dictate my life.  That’s what I tell myself every time I step onto a plane to a wonderful place that I always enjoy.   I have never regretted a single flight I’ve ever taken.  That’s probably because I’ve never crashed, but that’s besides the point.  My other mantra is: “the safest place to be is in God’s will.”  That’s another good one.

I’m going to miss them so much.

I need to stop being a baby.

Corn Chowder variation recipe will be posted tomorrow…or at least before we leave.  I promise.