at Mon, 23 Aug 2004 17:21:21 GMT in <cgd9d1$hgs$1@ngspool-
d02.news.aol.com>, (Tank) wrote :

>This year, I have noticed a number of grocery
>stores placing trash cans next to their sweet
>corn displays. This is for those people who
>feel it necessary to strip their corn there in
>the store. Are they placed there because the
>stores are knuckling under to rude people who
>peel back the ears to check them? What happened
>to being able to judge an ear without destroying
>it?

This I'll admit is mildly irritating. I've found that it is possible to
determine the quality of corn without opening it in the slightest.
Meanwhile, if people open the ears slightly, the end has a tendency to dry
out and also to lose sweetness slightly faster.

However, determining the quality of corn without opening it at all is
difficult and requires a fair amount of practice as well as a finely-tuned
judgment. So I can't really fault people who inspect too badly, because
inevitably there are a few ears that are underdeveloped or wormy, and if
you're not looking and feeling very closely, you'll most likely pick one
up.

Nonetheless, far, far more irritating than this is the common supermarket
practice of trimming ears. They pull off the outer husks, cut the stem
right back to the cob, and often cut off the entire end, kernels and all.
Some of the worst even pull off all the husk on one side. This definitely
*does* cause the corn to deteriorate much faster and I think should be
eliminated. OTOH, it's rare indeed that I'll buy from a supermarket anyway
because the ears are almost never fresh (i.e. picked that day). There are
enough farms around here either with U-pick or who sell corn picked that
day at farm stands and farmers' markets, that going to a supermarket is
questionable anyway.

> What happened to simply taking the luck of
>the draw with your produce, as the human race
>has for thousands of years?

I disagree here on both counts. If they have produce available for you to
pick through, there's nothing wrong with hand-selecting the best individual
pieces. If you worry that this is depriving others of potential quality in
the produce, I would respond that it's first-come, first-serve. I readily
accept, if I arrive at a farmer's market late, that I'm not going to get
the pick of the lot.

And people *have* been hand-selecting for years. Ever since there have been
markets, people have gone and examined fruits for the best ones, picked out
the very best pieces of meat, taken the nicest, freshest vegetables.

What *is* impolite is when the people who are hand-selecting don't treat
the produce with respect. In other words, they casually fling around
easily-bruised peaches or apples, root roughly through baskets of delicate
mushrooms or strawberries, or bend carrots and green beans till they snap.
This ruins food and, I think, requires more careful monitoring from store
or market personnel. But ironically, it seems that the people who treat the
produce with the least respect are most commonly those who "take the luck
of the draw" and just shovel things into bags. I suppose it makes sense -
those who, when it comes down to it, don't care that much about the quality
of the produce they're getting (or don't know that there is any
difference), might expect others would feel likewise.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)