Yes, it’s time once again for WITW Glasgow! Today’s special topic is WITW TESCO! Please join our studio audience as we all ask that pertinent question: “What! In! The! World?!“
Some of the more surreal conversations we’ve had in sunny downtown Glasgow have been about food and drink. We’ve chuckled over the sounds of things — clootie dumplings and cullen skink, to name two — and we’ve sampled the various flavors (disgusting, and sugar-free disgusting) of Irn-Bru. But this one… this one has got us stumped. Co-worker Kate thinks we’re the ones who are confused, but we just can’t get over… sweetcorn.
Sweetcorn. Really. It raises the question: For there to be sweetcorn, mustn’t there also be… uh, bitter-corn, sour-corn, salty-corn, tart-corn, bosky-corn, and umami-corn? Can it just not be… corn? And sweet be a dubious varietal you get from the seed company? I mean, there’s corn, field corn, and popcorn. What more does one really need?
And now Tesco assures us that sweetcorn is …naturally sweet. As opposed to unwholesomely or unnaturally sweet sweetcorn that you might get elsewhere, say, at Morrisons.
We give up.
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Ah, if you have grown corn you know that if you pick the corn too early, or if you pick it and let it sit for a few days in the heat, it won’t be sweet no way, no how. The English language is obviously a strange and wondrous thing to allow for such a label…but the real question is: IS it sweet?
As I recall, Nigella Lawson loves canned cream corn (a taste she acquired in childhood).
Thanks for your comments about anemia. You are right about spinach. I will update my blog on the lentil/spinach patties and point out that spinach hampers the absorption of iron!!!!
What about peppercorn? 😉
Elle: So … sweetcorn is just by way of saying that they picked it at the right time?
Sher: Glad to be of help! And Nigella … isn’t a name spoken ’round these parts. 😉
Jes: Yikes! Awful Pun! Thanks. 😉
It’s actually sweet corn as opposed to starchy corn, or animal feed corn, if you will. In Germany, starchy corn is the only kind grown, and it’s fed to animals. There’s also the starchy kind of corn that makes hominy and the kind that makes posole, and the kind that makes popcorn and the kind that makes – well – you get the idea – LOL! So I guess to them, labeling it as sweet corn tells everyone that it’s NOT one of the other starchy corns. Right?
Thanks, Claudia!
It’s still funny, no matter that there’s an explanation, and I think that it falls into the category of “language difference” (a post coming on that, over at Hobbits, maybe tomorrow). It’s like “sticky toffee pudding” … how, exactly, would a toffee pudding not be sticky? 😉
I am now craving corn, or should I say sweetcorn! Yum 😛 I keep a little tin in the cupboard for such emergencies 🙂
I can’t wait to harvest the sweetcorn I am growing in my garden…