Corn’s been in my mind a lot this week.

“Yeah, being in Nebraska will do that to you….”

As I was saying, some corn-related items have surfaced these past few days, not just from being here, but I guess in general.

Corn thought #1: In Florida, local corn harvests are in full swing, with our local Publix grocery store offering yellow, white and bi-color corn from a farm in Belle Glade, FL.

Okay, so that isn’t super local.  I realized that I could drive to Houston in less time than it would take me to drive to Belle Glade, which is west of West Palm Beach along Lake Okeechobee.

It’s been great having fresh corn available to us for as little as 10 cents per ear!

Corn thought #2: This week The Pioneer Woman held another Kitchen Aid Mixer giveaway, and she randomly selects the winners from the folks who answer simple questions in her comments section.  Here’s the giveaway post, and you can see how many comments it generated.  Yep, you read right…over 51,000 comments!  The question was “What’s your absolute favorite vegetable?”

The following day, she not only posted the randomly-selected winner, but she also offered the statistical distribution of what answers she received.  Number one on the list?  Corn!

Potatoes were #5 on the list, and I don’t agree with that one either.

Last summer, when Nebraska corn was available at roadside stands, I had set up a quickie poll to ask about whether corn should be treated as a starch or a vegetable at the dinner table.  My family’s inclination is to use it as a starch, although I know that school cafeterias and 2/3 of my poll respondents treat corn as a vegetable.  I wrote up the results, along with a ranting about Florida corn being available at my local Eastern Nebraska Wal Mart (and how stupid that seemed).

I think I’m going to present that poll again…I have a pretty wide range of readers now.  Look to the right of the ORIGINAL blog post (it won’t work if you’re viewing this on Facebook or via RSS/e-mail) and answer my non-scientific poll question!

Corn thought #3: Enjoy a picture the gift I bought for my boys today at Chocolaterie Stam in Papillion, NE.  They’re filled with a hazelnut chocolate creme…yum!  These chocolates give props to the first American Chocolaterie Stam store in Des Moines, IA.  Jacob asked me to bring some of these back from Nebraska for him.

Aren’t they cute?  Each one is about the size of my pinky finger.