Two Recipes

Hi, friends. I've been asked to share Anne's baked corn recipe, and I want to share the grape salad recipe I had at my other brother's house too. You want both of these!

Baked Corn

I hesitate to call this a recipe. In my opinion, the secret is to start with fresh, homegrown corn that you picked, cleaned, cut off the cob, and froze last summer. I tried this recipe with canned cream corn -- bleh. I don't it would be as good if you bought corn at the grocery, or even at your local farm vendor's stall. My brother Max (the family horticulture expert) always claimed that good corn can only be had by picking it, running to the house, prepping it in a hurry and getting it into boiling water within 8 minutes of when it was standing in the field. I kid you not. I've seen him bolt for the front door, having put the water on to boil beforehand. We Robinsons are a bit anal that way! haha :)

I've never seen Anne use fresh-from-the-garden corn for this recipe. You'd never eat this in summer if you had fresh corn in the garden ready to eat. We ate this the other day because this summer's corn isn't ready yet, and she's using up last summer's frozen corn. Plop your bag of frozen corn into a casserole dish after it's thawed mostly. Add salt and pepper. It will have lots of the milky/watery liquid from having cut the corn, which makes it look a bit like creamed corn. Just bake it. That's all. Yummy!

Alright, here's the Grape Salad recipe my other sister-in-law made for us during our pool party at their house.

2 8-oz. packages cream cheese, well softened
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup white sugar

Blend these well into a creamy mixture.
Add red grapes (or perhaps green, or perhaps blueberries -- any firm fruit, even cherries?) that have been cleaned and stemmed.

Spoon into a serving bowl and chill.
Sprinkle brown sugar on top. Then generously sprinkle chopped pecans.

That's all -- so easy! But the grape/cream cheese combination in this salad makes it a winner. Great flavor, great texture.

There you go!