Just what are roasten ears?

While I was visiting on the phone I mentioned about how the cabbage cooking on the stove was smelling up the house and the complaints about it. It was left over from the cole slaw I made earlier in the week and I was looking forward to it for supper and would add a few bacon pieces for flavor. It was on the supper menu along with roasten ears. “What are roasten ears?” my grandson asked, and he then undertook to tell me there wasn’t such a thing. It was called corn-on-the-cob. Well, what was I thinking?

I never tried to argue the paint. He was talking to a woman who was raised on a hog farm that always had several hundred acres of corn fields radiating out from the house. It’s the generation gap. He eats breakfast, lunch and dinner. I still eat breakfast, dinner and supper. I don’t believe there was any sweet corn planted until after I left home. The roasting ears and canned corn came right out of the field. But it wasn’t the hybrid corn that it is now.

Steve Shepherd hared some squash and Junior Matthews gave me new potatoes and I’ve sacrificed some green tomatoes for green fried. Man, that’s good eating but a lot of fried food this week.

When my sister and I visited I told her how I liked beets. They have an earthy taste but I never did learn to like pickled beets. Something else I didn’t like was wilted lettuce. It was on the table a lot. Another thing was oyster soup. The oysters were bought fresh and were just about the slimiest thing I’ve ever seen.

They had to be prepared a certain way with hot water and certain temperature. I was always allowed to fry myself an egg instead. Mom was raised Swedish and there was a lot of fish on our table. Canned salmon, salted salmon, sardines, frozen pike and salted fish in wooden buckets. I like fish except for oysters. The further away from the kitchen on those nights the better,of course, it was usually that way because there was kitchen work to be done and I’d rather be slopping the hogs.

She and I talked about how we used to eat bacon grease on our roasten ears, when there was no butter.

It was delicious. We also preferred it on our popcorn. Her question was why doesn’t bacon taste like it used to. Of course, it was in the way it was preserved and cured and salted. Also part of the difference in taste of fried potatoes, etc., is that we no longer use lard, but we both agreed that liver and onions is one of our favorite dishes.

I had a great visit with Babe and Marilyn Pennington because we hadn’t visited for a while. Old friendsare the best friends and you don’t even have to see them often to be dear. We share a grandson and we all think he is the best thing since Oreo cookies!

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Editors note: Edith Lammey has been a resident of the area for nearly 40 years. She can be contacted through The Times at 451-1196 or prtnews@nwaonline.

com.