Polenta: A Simple Way to Enjoy Corn
There is a telling scene in the John Sayles film, Matewan, when the striking coal miners have set up a tent city outside of the West Virginia town. In the scene an Italian woman is moved to harshly criticize how the West Virginia women are cooking their cornmeal. The West Virginians respond with some derogatory comment on the Italian womens polenta, and it all explodes into a shouting argument of women protecting their time-honored ways. Eventually they calm down and share their cornmeal recipes, which have since been folded into the great soup pot that has become American cuisine. It is a brilliant lesson of how our culture was created from this mingling of diverse and varied traditions.
In present times, corn has come under considerable scrutiny even to the point of questioning whether it is safe to eat at all. According to the Center for Food Safety more that 70 percent of processed foods contain some genetically modified corn or soy, which research is now proving can be hazardous to human health. In addition, Americans eat high amounts of corn in the form of high fructose corn sugar; animals fed corn, packaged goods made with corn and foods fried in corn oil.
