Survivor Corn and Other Oddities

Have you ever noticed the odd stuff you find in the kitchen?

Like when you open the refrigerator and find two Matchbox cars floating in an uncovered dish of yogurt and maple syrup?

No? That's just me? Oh, well that's embarrassing.

Well I've discovered a couple of interesting things (not perpetrated by my children) this week.

First up is the survivor corn. You know how you always here on TV and read in books about the will of living things to survive? Usually it's a story about a dog that lived for three weeks with it's head caught in a jar, or a bear rescuing her cubs from a flood or something.

Did you know that corn apparently also has a great survival instinct? Matt brought home some corn from a local farm, and as I was shucking it, I found this.

That's a piece of buckshot. Based on the way the kernels grew nicely around the lead, I'm guessing it ended up there early on in it's development. Probably the result of dove hunters.

But did this corn just wither up and die of a gun shot wound? No it did not. It showed remarkable will to survive, and incorporated the lead shot into its beauty.

I'm glad I discovered it before someone bit into it... Otherwise the buckshot might have ruined the beauty of somebody's smile!

In the same batch of corn, I found a "vanishing twin." Inside the husk of one ear of corn, I found this little anomaly.

It is the start of another ear of corn. I showed the boys and when we peeled back the soft husk, we found out what corn looks like before its kernels grow into their crunchy, juicy yumminess.


And finally this week, I discovered that when you microwave a big bowl of milk (in preparation for making yogurt) it sometimes forms a crispy-looking film on top. This film gets all wrinkly and ripples from the slightest movement of the air around it.

You might already have known that, but I didn't. And the boys had fun fanning and blowing on the bowl of milk to make the ripples. Before I scraped it off (wherein we found that it's really not crispy, but is more goopy...) and finished the yogurt.

See, kids? Housework can be fun and exciting!