Sweet Corn Smut:

           You’re out in the garden, you see the brown silk fountaining out the top of your corn ears and you say to yourself “There’s going to be good eatin’ tonight!”

            And then you see it, that gray thick blob stuff pushing out the end of an ear.  It looks so gross you don’t even want to touch it. Yet you are afraid it’s going to infect the rest of your corn. So with the “heebie jeebies” at a fevered pitch, you grab the ear by its base and rip it, and toss it as though it were a timered stick of C4.

            You dance around shaking your hand, for you are sure some of this deadly substance has leaked out somehow, so you go to the sink and scrub until your skin’s transparent.

            Just calm down, it’s only Corn Smut. Yes it looks awful, and you can’t imagine it not being deadly. But the truth of the matter in countries like Mexico it’s considered a culinary delicacy. Yes, I kid you not, they use it in a number of recipes.

            We here in the States look at it as a blight; and as you wouldn’t even consider licking mold off the basement wall, we regard Smut the same way.  

            I’m not saying that you should go on a “smut hunt”, begging your neighbors for their smut; you can if you want. I’m just saying you don’t need to look like such a freaked out little school girl if you see it on your corn.

            If you still remain a little squeamish after reading this just know that you can remove it and keep what’s left of the cob, it will be fine.