The Corn Queen

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A few weeks ago Lauren and I were sorting of doing a wishful thinking thing about locally grown oats.  I have yet to find any, despite emailing or calling any leads I can find.  Until Lauren and her husband manage to plant oats for us all to covet, I continue to try to track some down.

Over the weekend I took my visiting-from-out-of-town parents to Reading Terminal Market.  I noticed Kauffman’s had a nice display of oats and grits and few other things.  I know that the Amish are not necessarily selling things grown in their neck of the woods, but I asked the nice man at the Kauffman’s booth anyway.  Alas, his answer was rather disappointing: Pennsylvania is just not an oat state. 

It’s not that oats don’t grow here, he said, just that most of the oats produced for human consumption are grown in the Midwest.  The oats that Kauffman’s sells are trucked in from the Midwest and cut here in Lancaster County.

He did remind me, though, that Pennsylvania does grow a lot corn and pointed out the grits Kauffman’s sells are local.  Of course, I could not resist the lure of local grits (that will be smothered in local butter and cheese, I might add) and bought a bag.

I should have realized, though: the Fair Food Farmstand sells cornmeal that’s produced from local corn and I’ve made some excellent polenta from it in the past.

While I prefer olive oil when cooking, I wonder what the chances are of finding oil made from local corn.  There are probably bunches of corn products one could find from local corn.