Seasonal Sundays: Summer Sweet Corn (Week 29)

Grab the butter, all, you just might need a stick or two for this week's "Seasonal Seven" recipe collection of sweet corn recipes. I hope you'll find one or two destined as "keepers" in your own recipe collections. Here's to the hunt!

~ Skip Straight to the Good Stuff ~

~ PIN This ~

Welcome to Seasonal Sundays ...

As ever, thank you for welcoming me into your InBox and RSS feed reader. It's your kitchens, your lives, I conjure while writing ...

"Knee high by the Fourth of July" ... that was long the expectation in Iowa and Illinois, the center of corn country. That was then, what forty or more years ago?

On Friday, we drove north from St. Louis toward Iowa along the Mississippi River to explore a wildlife refuge where the gravel roads were lined with field corn taller than me, even on my tippy toes with my fingers reaching skyward.

But July and August are "sweet corn season" in this household, just like April and May are "asparagus season" and so I'm thrilled to share my favorite summer sweet corn recipes, hoping to persuade you to bring home (harvest?!) corn by the dozen.

PS Isn't it funny, calling corn "ears" of corn?!

In Praise Of ...

• ... new hummingbird feeders, after the lids on the last ones cracked, I picked these hummingbird feeders with built-in perches, never thinking that the hummingbirds would use the perches, but they do! and ... get this ... so do other birds! I had no idea!


• ... more zen in my life, in the last two years, I've toned down our dining room from a garish red (not my pick) to a buttery cream color, it's so soft and soothing and lets a painting that never before had a "happy place" finally stand out ... but the room felt a little too cool and had so many hard angles ... so last month I bought this lovely Hearth & Hand squat brown glass vase from Target (the color reminds me of an Iitala glass vase from Finnish designer Alvar Aalto I've long admired but is no longer available and even other colors cost 10X as much) and filled it with a bundle of subtly colored silk hydrangeas ... very pretty! and just the softness I was hoping for


• ... a lazy hour (or two ...) floating in the pool, avoiding the news, the worry, the outright angst about what might lie ahead for our country

Democracy Matters

The country needs calm, thoughtful and assertive voices amid the chaos inflicted by a minority hellbent on taking/retaining generational power by strangling democratic principles and equal rights. None of us have to personally change the world. We just have to do our part. Pick one thing for the top of your To Do List this week.

Political violence is anti-democratic, anti-Christian and anti-American. End of story.

---

---

THE SEASONAL SEVEN:

For this week's recipes, I aimed for recipes where summer's best corn is the real star ...

• ... from must-make basics to old favorites with a special twist (homemade creamed corn with a touch of butter and rosemary? be still, my heart)
• ... from starters to sides to soups to salads to ... yes, suppers!
• ... the one recipe that just might knock your socks off? try the Sweet-corn Soup with Shrimp

• THE RECIPE Creamy Ricotta with Tomato-Cucumber-Corn Salad A simple appetizer, creamy and sharp at once, served with Homemade Ricotta. (PIN This)
• ANOTHER TAKE Sweet Corn Relish A simple summer relish, no canning required. (PIN This)

• THE RECIPE Fresh Creamed Corn Garden luxury, straight to the table. (PIN This)
• ANOTHER TAKE Homemade Creamed Corn A simple, healthy makeover. (PIN This)

• THE RECIPE Cooler Corn - How to Cook Corn in a Beer Cooler Makes excellent corn ahead of time in cooler or on the stove. Perfect for parties and cookouts! (PIN This)
• ANOTHER TAKE Quick Microwave Sweet Corn So fresh and flavorful, so juicy and perfect.

• THE RECIPE Summer's Best Corn Chowder As bright and colorful as crates of fresh vegetables lined up at the farmstand.
• ANOTHER TAKE Sweet-Corn Soup with Shrimp Familiar ingredients combine into something unusual and surprising.

• THE RECIPE Chilled Zucchini Noodle Salad with Pesto, Sweet Corn & Sun-Dried Tomato A "no recipe" recipe.
• ANOTHER TAKE Fresh Corn & Tomato Salad Perfect corn, perfect tomatoes add up to more than the sum of their parts.

• THE RECIPE Summer Green Bean Salad with Corn & Pickled Onion Simple ingredients, so much more than the sum of its parts. (PIN This)
• ANOTHER TAKE Black Bean & Corn Salad Summer in a bowl, so good!

• THE RECIPE Swiss Chard Skillet Supper with Tomatoes, Corn, Fresh Dill & Feta A hearty, late-summer meal, all in one skillet.
• ANOTHER TAKE Cauliflower Steaks with Warm Corn & Poblano Salsa Roasted until golden and topped with a warm salsa of summery vegetables.

Good to Know!

• How to Freeze Corn
• How to Cut Corn Off the Cob, Keeping All Ten Fingers, Capturing Every Delicious Kernel and Every Drop of Sweet Corn "Milk"

What's Brand-Spankin' New?!

Wondering about a recipe from the last while? Check Recent Recipes from Kitchen Parade and Recent Vegetable Recipes from A Veggie Venture.

• THE RECIPE Garden Pasta Salad with Mint Vinaigrette Light on pasta, generous with summer's best fresh veggies. (PIN This)

• THE RECIPE Old-Fashioned Potato Salad Loaded with protein, all my mom's tricks for the best version of this picnic classic. (PIN This)

• THE RECIPE Easy-Easy Hummus Salad Another Quick Supper, just a light, loose hummus topped with chickpeas, fresh summer vegetables and feta. (PIN This)

• THE RECIPE Light & Lemony Crab Salad Quick, low-cost protein for sandwiches, crackers, omelets and more. (PIN This)

July: Reader Favorites

• THE RECIPE How to Sweeten Lemonade with Fruit Not Sugar Summer experiments with pineapple, watermelon and more. (PIN This)
• ANOTHER TAKE Old-Fashioned Homemade Lemonade How to make real lemonade with a simple technique that extracts extra flavor from the lemon peels. (PIN This)

July: Lost Recipes

• THE RECIPE Summer Couscous with Mango & Tomato Couscous all dressed up for summer.
• ANOTHER TAKE Ina Garten's Tabbouleh Salad It has a secret ingredient! (PIN This

Looking Back ...

THIS WEEK, YEARS PAST
• 2020 Summer Suppers (Week 29)
• 2023 Zucchini Season (Week 29)

RECENT WEEKS
• Peach Season! (Week 28) (PIN This)
• Red, White (& Blue) (Week 27) (PIN This)
• Let's Beat This Heat (Week 26) (PIN This)
• No-Ordinary Green Beans for Summer (Week 24) (PIN This)
• Summer Easy (Week 22) (PIN This)
• Summery Spreads & Dips (Week 21) (PIN This)

Soups & Salads Especially for July

• THE RECIPE Zucchini Carpaccio Super simple, a "no recipe" recipe.
• THE COLLECTION Seasonal Soup & Salad Recipes for July There's no going hungry in July!

Silly (But Fun?!) Food Holidays

• July 14th — National Mac & Cheese Day (Mac & Chicken Just mac 'n' cheese with chicken, just mac 'n' cheese with protein.)
• July 16th — Hot Dog Night (Fun Pretzel Roll Hot Dogs, a make-ahead sandwich for parties, tailgaters, campers, hunters.)
• July 16th — National Fresh Spinach Day (Kitchen Parade recipes that call for spinach.)
• July 17th — National Peach Ice Cream Day (Rustic Fruit Ice Cream, an easy, no-cook rich, creamy and fruity ice cream. Oh my, that peach.)
• July 19th — National Raspberry Cake Day (Raspberry Morning Cake, a fruity coffee cake.)

A Quick Peek Into a Real-Life Kitchen

Just so you know, everything's not all pretty pictures around here, in the background is a pile of dirty dishes. And just like many (all?) of us, come five o'clock, I too draw a blank about what to make for supper, despite so many recipes I so dearly love. Here's a quick peek from this week.

• THIS WEEK Another week, another swim party, this time with lunch for out-of-town guests. I made up a 1.5x batch of my signature chicken salad, that was perfect for two dozen small sandwiches. So good!
• THE RECIPE Chicken Salad for Sandwiches Makes up in minutes with pantry ingredients. (PIN This)

• THIS WEEK I ran out of time to make even the super-simple Cooler Corn for a family swim party on Sunday, leaving me with a dozen ears of corn to eat up. First up? So good!!
• THE RECIPE Fresh Corn & Tomato Salad Perfect corn, perfect tomatoes add up to more than the sum of their parts.

Don't Be a Stranger ...

I'd love to hear from you. Comment, send me a quick e-mail (my current address is in the FAQs), dot-dash in Morse code, build a fire for smoke signals, launch a message in a bottle, send a Christmas letter, get the dog to yip, toss me a note wrapped in a rubberband, write a message in the sky, scratch a note in the sand, listen to a seashell, tuck a question into a plastic Easter egg, whatever.

• Any advice for Seasonal Sundays?
• Just one thing that would make it more useful for you?
• Anything else? Chime in, chat away.

---

Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail, you'll find my current address in the FAQs. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. When you make my recipes, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below or better still, on the specific recipe's page.

---

© Copyright Kitchen Parade
2024