The Forager

by STEVE SPRINKEL

Photo: Liz Otterbein

IN THE SECOND WEEK, WE HAD PLENTY OF CONFIDENCE AND THE SHORT LITTLE EARS MADE FOR SOME “MIGHTY FINE EATIN’” AS THEY SAY AROUND LINCOLN, NEBRASKA. THIS WEEK’S REMNANT CORN IS BIG ON FLAVOR AND SOMETIMES TOUGH ON THE CHEW. IT IS GENERALLY 48 HOURS AWAY FROM BEING OVER THE HILL, BUT TO SOME THIS FOOD SEEMS PRIME. THESE EARS ARE STILL SHORT OF PUCKER AND MORE SUGAR THAN STARCH, THOUGH YOU MAY ENCOUNTER ABERRATIONS TO THIS ASSUMPTION. I CAN’T CHECK EVERY EAR OF CORN, AND YES, WORM.

If you are done gnawing on the cob, stand the new ear on end and cut kernels clean from the knob. Now fry them with onions and potatoes and warm up a tortilla. Cheese it on up and spice a few slivers of jalapeño and set your magnificent burrito down on a skillet to mingle the goo. Spatula it o to a plate and let it cool a second or three so you don’t o end your tender lips with an impetuously steamy bite. There’s an optimum temperature for eating without harm. “Slow down, Steve, nobody’s going to take it away from you,” my mother occasionally said, when I insisted on wolfing a sizzling plate-load, hung and sucking to cool o my conflagrational tongue. “Oh, Mommy, Mommy. You were such a wise Irish mum.” And I, the renegade German heathen, his father’s son, thoughtless as a bear.

I just can’t control myself. As for these I know the other hometown dealers are tough customers, because I stopped going into their joints, hat in hand, long ago. I want to say YES to my harvest brothers and sisters because I heard “Sorry, we’re good” too many times from the churlish miscreants of the rascal cartel downtown.

Sorry? That word cuts both ways, Calvin. Calvin was my first produce man, pencil behind his ear, green apron in front and everything - steamy bifocals and going bald. Little did I know that Cal was going to be my role model. I remember bothering the poor man with a hundred questions I still don’t know the answer to. I can see Cal’s glittering produce section at the Central Market in old Upland town now. Cal used to dote on my mom because they shared a mutual admiration for romaine.

Heidi, Farmer and Cook’s manager royale, likes to make the produce case look like a jewelry store, shiny and bumper-crop with ruby strawberries and emerald broccoli. People are born to Calvin. Isn’t there something spiritually inspiring about all the weird God-made shapes and sizes of the crops we eat? Imagine all the weird varieties and colors. The grapes and asparagus and artichokes! Bananas, mangoes, and red chard. Why, the world is all so darn purty, so indescribably yummy, that it makes you want to take a knee and humble-up some thanks to the great Power of the Making, wherever it must reside - maybe in a smoothie blender, or those lines of withering beets needing to go, or the buckets of compost burbling with bacteria out back.

CSA share-boxes, no discipline. I know I overladed the vast few weeks with a smorgy of springtime bites. New woman quit after two weeks on the box. “It’s just too much for two people,” she says.

Not the first time someone’s begged to go because we were too generous. Like a hoarder who can’t pass up a bargain at the discount store, though they already own toppling stacks of unopened garments, I gather because I can. I just want to help the vegetable and fruit economy, to do my part when lunatic-oversupply threatens the existential balance of the universe. And so I buy, and I buy, peaches, avocados, plums. At least the staff at the store will eat it.

I do let people get to me all the time, but I forget they’ve done it to me until they do it again. Man on the hill inherited the tree-tangle of fruit planted by his father-in-law. The orchard was fi g-heavy and plum-crazy. Last year he sold me the world’s smallest tangerines, so smidgey you’d have to peel them with a microscope. When he bragged about his “Persian” golden plums a week ago, I said, “How big are they?” “Oh, big! They’re pretty good size.” When I came in later, there they were, 50 pounds of shooter marbles. Around 500 of them. You ever play marbles? You’ll know what a shooter is, and it ain’t no glassy jumbo. He gave me a clue as to what deceit would befall when he began the sales pitch by telling me:

“My wife thinks you are the handsomest man in town.” I say, “Your wife says that? You better keep an eye on her. Besides, that must mean she doesn’t get out much.” Friggin’ nut job.