Sweet, sweet corn

Sweetcorn is at the height of its seasonality right now and we have been eating lots of it because it has "preferred vegetable status" in our household, particularly with Master Five.

I think sweetcorn is so popular in our household because we have adorned it with special implements. Mr Five is a gadget man. Takes after his dad. And his uncles.

These corncob holders are an essential part of the corn experience at our place now. It even inspired our two little ones to get into corn-on-the-cob (even though they are not so convinced about corn off the cob).

I haven't known much about the nutritional make-up of sweetcorn in the past. So I did a little bit of reading. Sweetcorn contains zinc, iron, selenium, potassium vitamin C and several of the B group too. They are a good source of fibre, protein and starch.

There are several easy ways to cook sweetcorn:

• To boil, simply remove the husk and tassel-stringy bits and put into boiling water. The corn will be cooked by the time the water has started boiling again.
• I like them cooked on the BBQ. If you want to try this method simply put them on the BBQ with their leaves and all still on. Cook for approximately 10 minutes, turning a few times.
• Corn can also be microwaved. This takes about 2-3 minutes, depending on the strength of your microwave.

If you have a surplus of corn, you can cut the kernels off the cob and freeze them for later use. No need to blanch them or anything. You could also try making these cheesy sweetcorn puffs which I made last week. These are brilliant for lunchboxes, and dead simple to make. Or what about making sweetcorn fritters? Both these recipes were posted last year by the lovely Kate Day.

Yum, yum, yum. I know what I am having for lunch.

Mummy to three small gadget boys