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CORNY, YET AWESOME

Photo: Courtesy of the Corn Palace/City of Mitchell, SD

Never seen the Corn Palace? You’re in for a treat. The annual Corn Palace Festival is kicking off August 22nd, and will run through the 26th. There are two big draws. One, the entertainment, including those old war-horses Night Ranger, Survivor, and Weird Al Yankovich. Even more thrilling, the Festival is the time when they organizers take down the last year’s murals and install the new ones.

“Each year we come up with a new theme,” Corn Palace Director Mark Schilling explained to me. “The theme that’s up there now is ‘Salute To Rodeo,’ and our new theme is ‘Everyday Heroes.’ The new murals show people in the occupations that make a difference in our community, teachers, military personnel, an action-shot of a power-line man, climbing the pole when it’s 20 degrees below zero, trying to fix the electricity so you’re nice and warm at home.”

In corn.

“We have 13 different colors of corn,” Schilling said. “It’s corn that most people refer to as Indian corn or Flint corn, and we have a grower who specially grows corn just for the Corn Palace. We want ears of solid color â??solid blue, solid yellow, solid green.” The decorators (yes, it’s a paid position) start out with a design, by artist Cherie Ramsdell. It looks like a paint-by-numbers diagram, which they then fill in with the corn and other South Dakota-grown grains, like rye and milo (whole grain sorghum).

I had to ask, what about the birds? “The birds do try to eat it,” said Schilling, “But we found with the flint corn, versus standard corn, it’s a harder kernel, so they don’t eat it as much.” It’s not like the birds don’t get a fair shot–the Corn Palace murals stay up year round. Curious? Check out the Corn Palace webcam run by South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

PEACHY

Photo: Andrea Fazzari

The first summer Tara and I were dating she went to Australia to work for a couple of weeks. It was the middle of winter there, of course, and she came back with a terrible cold and a wicked case of jet lag. When she arrived at my apartment from the airport I gave her some peach sorbet I’d made the night before. She put the first bite in her mouth and got tears in her eyes. “Oh my god,” she said, “you really do love me, don’t you?”

Peaches can do that to a person. To my mind they’re one of the best things about summer, up there with fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, raspberries, ridiculous amounts of basil, and. . . well, you get the idea. They’re churlish travelers, bruising and denting before they’re even ripe, so they’re really only worth getting in high summer from a farmers’ market or farm stand or, best of all, by picking your own. I won’t buy a peach without smelling it at the stem end. If I don’t get a rich, heady waft of summer, I keep looking.

There’s something intensely satisfying about eating a perfectly ripe peach out of hand, preferably outside or standing over a sink, but they’re even better with a hint of something sharp or bitter. The peach sorbet I made Tara (from a recipe in Lindsey Shere’s Chez Panisse Desserts) calls for cracking open a few peach pits and adding the almond-like kernel inside to sugar and peeled, sliced peaches before heating the whole mass gently, whirring it in a blender, and freezing it in an ice cream maker. The kernels lend a hint of nutty bitterness that takes the sorbet from luscious to transcendent.

The contrast need not be obvious to work well. Peach shortcake is a beautiful thing but it gets even better with slivers of lemon verbena folded into the whipped cream and peaches, since the lemony brightness of the herbs neatly balances the sweetness and richness. And peaches marry so well with blueberries, I think, because the latter are a little tart even when they’re perfectly ripe. I’ve been buying blueberries from Phillips Farm like a crack addict and making dish after dish with peaches and blueberries: heaping bowls full with tart yogurt every morning, pie and cobblers for dessert in the evenings. It doesn’t get any better than this.

SEVEN REASONS TO FALL FOR HARBOUR ISLAND IN THE BAHAMAS

1. It’s a fabulous summer destination. With dependable Atlantic breezes, tiny Harbour island–a tropical Nantucket, just a few miles from Eleuthra. And it’s low season until mid-December, which means not only uncrowded beaches but also house-rentals prices and hotel rates are much lower than they are during the winter.

2. It’s bling-free. Almost alone among the best islands in the Caribbean–Saint Bart’s, Anguilla, the Turks and Caicos–tiny Harbour Island is not the place to go if your idea of a great vacation is shopping duty-free Rolexes. The day’s big buying moment comes when picking up fresh rock lobster tails at the dock–10 pounds for about $75.

3. Everyone’s invited to the party. Who say’s anyone over 40 doesn’t dance? On Harbour Island, everyone plays together, hitting the same bars and clubs–Gusty’s, with a sand dance floor; funky Vic-Hum’s, where the dance floor doubles as an open-air basketball court; and the Sea Grapes, where no stands still when the junkaroo bands get going.

4. The pink sand beach. Made from coral, it’s one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. The turquoise waters of the Atlantic are dive-right-in warm, too.

5. Jalepeño bread and other delicacies. Folks head to Arthur’s bakery in the morning for coconut bread, sticky rolls, and cheese-and-jalapeño bread that’s perfect with barbecued fish. Other great things to eat on the island include the fresh conch salad at the Queen Conch stand near the harbor, the epic cheeseburger at Sip Sip (where the crowds goes for lunch) the grilled tuna steak at The Landing, and the cappellini with rock shrimp at The Rock House.

6. No traffic. Harbour Island is car-free; everyone gets around on electric golf carts.

7. It’s a peaceable kingdom. Founded by British Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution and African slaves who once worked on Eleuthra’s pineapple plantations, Harbour Island is that rare Caribbean island where everyone’s lived together harmoniously for centuries.

WHAT TO DO WITH A RIPE TOMATO
(A QUICK RECIPE, OF SORTS)

I just bought my first tomato of the year. I am goddamned excited.

I’m not a dogmatic local-seasonal-sustainable eater. But, in life, there are certain things I believe in waiting for: tomatoes, peaches. . . I’m sure there are more. Well, maybe there are more.

But anyway, tomatoes. I have one. It’s gorgeous and I waited a long time for it, because I love a ripe tomato so much I can’t bring myself to eat anything but. Around this time every year, I start keeping a bowl of them on my counter, red and green and yellow and purple, sweet and sour and salty and umamilicious. For two months I’ll keep replenishing it as they keep disappearing, pressed into service. Sometimes I’ll puree them to make a base for ratatouille, sometimes I’ll eat them right out of the bowl, but most often they will command me to make my favorite summer dish, a spectacle of the season ready in minutes. I waited this long already, and I’m not going to wait much longer.

I get some spaghetti boiling in salty water while I dice up a bunch of tomatoes and throw them–with their juices–in a mixing bowl with plenty of salt, pepper, and a couple glugs of olive oil. If I’m feeling sassy, and if the tomatoes are particularly sweet, I’ll give it a splash of nice, light vinegar.

I cover everything with a handful of arugula, and a few thin shavings of shallot on top. This is where it gets hard. The layering is important, so I have to fight myself not to dig into the bowl. Usually there’s some meditation involved, but I suck at yoga, so basically this is when I start screaming obscenities at the pasta to finish cooking.

When it’s finally done, I drain it and throw it on top of everything in the bowl and let it sit there, exercising patience for another two minutes. The reward is that the heat from the pasta will take off the shallots’ raw onion edge and wilt the arugula. Meanwhile, I keep myself busy by shaving long, fabulous strips of good Parmigiano on top.

After those interminable minutes, I stir. I stir like the possessed, mixing it all up, stretching and pulling melting strands of cheese, coating the pasta in juice and oil.

And then I go out to my balcony, seven stories above the beautiful grime of Queens, where the hot air blows around me and I can hear kids below screaming at Mister Softee to finish pulling their soft serve. Bowl resting on my knees and ice melting too fast in my glass, I sit there and slurp away my summer.