A once-famous, long-lost corn variety returns from the dead
One of the endearing aspects of the Thanksgiving meal is the way families bring their additions to the common fare and, in time, forge their own culinary traditions.
For the Farmer family in Landrum, South Carolina, the day is usually marked with a cornbread dressing. The cornbread comes from a dent corn variety that the aptly named Farmers actually grow on their 60-acre farm 10 miles south of the North Carolina border.
Making your own cornbread is not as easy as you might think. You can cut a head of broccoli or pull a tomato without undue fuss, but to get corn meal from the field to the kitchen, you have to shepherd the corn through an entire growing season and put it through the mill. Fortunately, the family's 97-year-old patriarch, Manning Farmer, has been doing this for most of his life and, to boot, has his own gasoline-powered grinding stones.
He grows a variety of corn that is remarkably large and white, and when it is ready on the stalk it is wrapped in papery husks the color of linen. The kernels - indented, hence "dent corn" - look as if they were carved from ivory.
Read more: https://www.greensboro.com/news/trending/a-once-famous-long-lost-corn-variety-returns-from-the/article_2c1adee0-6437-5960-ac74-6f46807e27de.html