This is one of the things I really love about living in the Bay Area. Here we are in Silicon Valley, center of the high-tech universe, a stone's throw away from two of the world's top universities and one of its great cities, and yet we're still only a short drive away from actual working farms! It's fantastic. It's one reason why the Bay Area is such foodie heaven - the combination of geographic proximity to some of the most productive farmland on earth and the extremely high concentration of wealth and disposable income. These two things combine to suck in excellent produce, meat, and seafood production as well as untold numbers of great restaurants.
This is how we eat in the USA, and this is why I'm fat:
I wasn't sure how much corn to buy when I got there, so I called Bill. He said that he bought two bushels last year. So I asked the woman at the counter how many ears were in a bushel. She asked me if I was from the midwest (apparently the term "bushel" is not used in California) and then told me that the answer was 48. Bill bought 96 ears of corn??? Wow. Well... we DID have a ton of it, for a very long time.
I ended up buying a hundred ears of sweet corn - 50 white and 50 yellow. In addition, I got pluots, haricots verts, strawberries, garlic, and tomatoes. All for under 28 dollars. Fun!
It took me over three hours of peeling, cleaning, boiling, slicing, seasoning, and bagging before I got all the corn into the freezer. It was only the second time that my giant All-Clad stockpot was actually needed (the first time was when Bill cooked last year's corn... lol). I nearly ran out of butter to put in the bags with the corn! This morning I had to take three bagsful of corn detritus to the dumpster. I'm happy, though. This cornucopia should last a very long time.
My roommate thought I had gone insane.
Tomorrow I think I'm gonna stop at Whole Foods to get some fresh mozzarella and basil and I'm gonna make some insalata caprese with my awesome tomatoes. Then maybe on Wednesday I'm gonna do something with the haricots verts. Not sure what, though. I guess I can look through my cookbooks, or just Google it.
Ok, I'm off to pig out on the strawberries. I think I'm slightly allergic to them, actually. I get a bit of an upset stomach whenever I have a lot. Ah, but who cares? They're so good!