Pork Marsala -- A Keeper from (Sam's) My Carolina Kitchen

My blog friend Sam 0f My Carolina Kitchen often posts recipes that I just have to try. This is Pork Marsala -- sauteed pork cutlets, topped with a sauce of mushrooms, shallots, and Marsala. I served it over garlicky mashed potatoes with asparagus fresh from the garden. Also a salad of greens with a mustardy vinaigrette. And some bubbly. Oh my!

(We were in such a hurry to eat this goodness that I didn't think about wiping the spills off the plate or even taking time to focus the camera. I could never do a food blog.)

The recipe (HERE) serves four and we were sorely tempted to eat it all but that would have been wrong.

 So I turned the leftovers into an upscale cottage pie -- cut up pork and sauce into a casserole, covered with the leftover potatoes -- and stuck it in the freezer as a nice surprise for another evening.

This dish would work equally well with boneless chicken breasts. Or if one were a vegetarian, the sauce (substituting veggie broth for chicken broth) and potatoes would be just fine without any meat at all.

As Corny As . . .

The squirrels and raccoons have decided that our corn is ready for harvest and have been shamelessly working away at it.

The silks haven't dried up yet, meaning that the ears are not fully mature but the critters don't care about that. "Good enough," they say and every morning finds a few more stalks downed.

So, in a preemptive strike, I've been harvesting the ears that are nearest ripe -- and I have to agree with the critters -- good enough.

I sit in a rocking chair on the front porch and shuck the haul of the day. This is 'natural' grown corn -- no sprays, but that does pretty much insure a corn worm at the tip of each ear.

For those of you not grossed out by caterpillars and such, click on the picture to 'biggify' it and marvel at the intricate coloring and pattern of this guy. I think he's gorgeous.

But that doesn't stop me from dropping him (and all the others,) along with the broken off, munched-on tips of the corn, into a bucket for the delectation of the chickens.

A few of the ears of corn have little undeveloped ears attached. You know those tiny little ears of corn in Chinese cooking? That's what these seem to be. ( I added them to stir-fry for supper and they were delicious.)

All this corn . . . I imagine a taste of summer in the winter -- corn chowder, vegetable soup, corn sauteed in sweet butter, corn fritters, and, of course, those delicious corn pancakes from Sam's Carolina Kitchen.

"There's a job done!" as the old folks around here used to say. A whole lot of sweet corn, blanched, cut off the cob, and bagged up to go to the freezer.

Where, I think I can say with confidence, it will be safe from squirrels and coons.