Europe Is Very Corn-y
 

As we are looking forward to our visit to Paris in May my wife and I were talking about are our last visit to Europe. We drove
from Amsterdam to Munich via Paris, Hornberg,
Zurich, Innsbrook, Salzburg and noticed that the crops was CORN? I don't mean some corn, I am talking about hundreds of miles of corn fields! I guess my question is, What do they do with all that corn? I really can't remember seeing corn on a menu anywhere.

In Europe, I believe it's more usually called maize and is used as animal feed.

the same thing in France, Rarely do they eat the corn, It is animal feed.

It's a prime ingredient of a Cornish pasty. (The name comes from Cornwall, not the vegetable.)

In Bristol, they put it on our <u>pizza</u>!

It's only rarely consumed by humans. They feed the pigs, duck, and geese with it. In France, it's key to the making of foie gras (thats what they force-feed the geese and ducks).

Brittany, all on its own, produces enough pork to feed all of Europe. In the Dordogne, the valley of the V&eacute;z&egrave;re used to have tobacco fields. They now tend to be corn fields, probably to feed all the geese and ducks whose foie gras we consume.

Except that I have been served cold salads that had corn as an ingredient...

Corn can be processed into other food and non-food items like: corn oil, high fructose corn sweeteners, starch, alcohol for human consumption, ethanol for car fuel, etc.

About the only time you see corn in France is in a salad, usually called a salade mexicaine. I assume it comes out of a can.

They do sell corn oil at the supermarket and I assume it's produced in France.

Corn hasn't caught on here. I don't think they grow much sweet corn. A few years ago I was with my niece at Chartier in Paris. She ordered corn on the cob. It was feed corn and basically inedible.

On a trip to France about five or six years ago, we were told by a local guide that corn was considered an animal food only, and rarely served to people. In fact, she said, a host serving corn to a guest was usually a sign of low esteem for the guest.

That evening, a large group of us went to a chateau for dinner. The contessa was the hostess and the count was the chef. We were served corn.

And you wonder why I have low esteem for the French, huh?

--Marv

I once had a 4th of July celebration for my neighbors in the Dordogne and invited them to dinner. I bought a plastic-wrapped carton of what looked like already shucked corn on the cob at the supermarket, boiled it, and served it with the usual butter, salt, and pepper. Not only were there murmurs and shocked expressions when I served it, it was totally inedible.

My attempt at making barbecued ribs with poitrine de porc wasn't much better :( But everyone loved the baked beans :)

At the Chatelain market in Brussels, for a few weeks at the end of the summer, you can get real &quot;human&quot; fresh corn on the cob. Not as fresh as from a farm stand in the U.S., but still decent. The rest of the year, you can only buy a few aged ears of tasteless, shrinkwrapped corn in certain supermarkets. No wonder Europeans think it's not worth eating. All those fields of corn are definitely feed corn.
When our Swiss relatives came to the Olympic Peninsula one summer, we showed them what corn is SUPPOSED to taste like. Boy were they shocked! They loved it!

Having seen miles and miles of cornfields during our trips to France we often asked the same question.

No, people, you are all wrong!

They don't have storks tossing babies in the chimneys, they find their babies in the cornfields! Or in Russia it would be cabbage beds.

I said the same thing when traveling from Venice to Milan on the train. I was expecting rolling wheat fields, not corn. I felt like I was back in Eastern Colorado...

Incidentally, much of the corn raised there is also used for animal feed. Small world, huh? :)

35 years ago in Bamberg, Germany, my parents frequently had their maid and her family to dinner on weekends. One weekend they had a good old-fashioned 4th of July bar-b-que-----with grilled corn on the cub.

I remember distinctly the look of puzzlement? Confusion? Consternation? When the corn was unwrapped from the tin foil Being polite folks, our German guests nibbled at the corn at first. Then gobbled it down and didn't hesitate to go for seconds.

They experienced a paradigm shift.

The equivalent did NOT happen when I tried Blutwurst for the first time.

&lt;&lt;with grilled corn on the cub&gt;&gt;

Rufus: The mind reels!;)

I know they eat, or at least used to eat, bear in the Harz mountains, but did they do it with a side of corn?

Faina, you're wrong. In Alsace the storks sit on chimmneys but I know babies are born in the cabbage patch. :)

Polenta and mammaliga (sp?) are made from corn, and probably not the sweet kind.

cub is the north central Nebraskan pronunciation of cob. Right.