Corn Cob Jelly

Yup! You heard me right. I said Corn Cob Jelly as in jelly made from corn cobs. Can you believe that! I had first heard mention of Corn Cob Jelly on Facebook earlier in the summer and had mentioned it to my dear friend Donna and look what Donna sent me!.....................

......a jar of Corn Cob Jelly and a corn cookbook she found on her travels at the Corn Cob Palace in Mitchell South Dakota.

So what does Corn Cob Jelly taste like? Well it's sweet and very mild and doesn't at all taste like a corn cob. Not that I've ever ate a corn cob before mind you, so maybe it tastes just like a corn cob and I don't know it. All I know is that it just tastes sweet, it is clear and it has a very pretty pinkish amber like color to it. A very unique jelly for sure.

How do you make Corn Cob Jelly you ask. I figured inquiring minds would want to know, so here is a recipe that was in the Corny Stuff book that Donna sent. There were 3 different recipes, so I settled on just one, but they were each very similar.

Corn Cob Jelly
by Margaret Fuchs

12-14 large red corn cobs (I'm sure you could use yellow ones)
3 pints water
3 cups sugar
1 pkg of pectin or Sure Jell

Wash the cobs well in cold water. Put in a large container and cover completely with water. Boil 30 minutes. Strain off 3 cups of juice and add 1 pkg pectin. Bring this mixture to a good boil. Add sugar and boil at a rolling boil for 1 minute. Add red food coloring. Skim the mixture and pour into jelly glasses. Can top with melted wax. (I know we don't use that method anymore, so just pour into scalded jars and seal).

So I got to thinking there are a lot of things that you can do with corn--the cob, the husk, the silk, the stalk.............

The corn stalk I think is best used for fall decor gathered together and tied in bundles.

The corn silk I read can be made into a tea or minced up and added to a salad (I will pass on both of these thank you!)

The husks can be made into Dolls (pdf pattern), used to make homemade Tamales (recipe), Wreaths (tutorial). Here's a beautiful wreath using the whole corn.

How about corn cob stock to add to soups and other cooking. Here's another corn cob jelly recipe that turns out yellow and has a bit of lemon in it.

Or how about Corncob Popcorn made by popping an ear of corn in a brown paper bag in the microwave. That looks fun!

And last but not least--ok so this truly is the least--as emergency toilet paper! Well ya know that's what great-grandma used to use. Poor woman!

And these are just a few of the uses for the very versatile corn. Who knew!

Thank you Donna!

Getting This Blog Going Again & David Taylor Quilts

Here it's been nearly 6 whole months that I've let my poor blog sit here ignored and neglected and so I figure it's high time to get it back up and going again. So without further delay here we go!........................

David Taylor at the Snake River Valley Quilt Guild in Idaho Falls, Idaho..................

Last night our guest speaker at quilt guild was the very talented and very funny quilt artist extraordinaire David Taylor. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring evening. David is as good a comic as he is a quilter and his journey's story to how his career into quilting came to be was also very interesting.

His work is truly amazing and all of the hours and the total process of how they come to be is really quite something. All of his quilts are hand appliqued in tiny little pieces with hundreds of pieces of fabrics used to create the vivid colorations and on top of that he uses color after color of thread changing the thread colors as he quilts--sometimes every few inches! These quilts are quite labor intensive.

This quilt is Tinker the goat, taken from a photo, as he does all of his quilts. Tinker was definitely one of my favorites. His chicken quilt was probably my next favorite, however we didn't see it, because it belongs to a private collection in Provence, France.

This is the back--yes the back of the Tinker quilt. Is that not absolutely amazing and just a gorgeous as the front! All of David's quilts are like this. A double sided work of art.
David said that he likes to make a quilt and then sell it and when he sells a quilt it's enough to buy a new jeep. Now that's some serious quilting money!

A close up of Tinker. This is on my cell camera, so the quality is very poor, but the work is absolutely amazing to see and touch in person. Tinker is listed on David's website for a mere $9000.

This is a close up of the barn wood he created in this piece. I love all of his Colorado Barn Series. Many, many pieces of different fabrics--that he will only use one time in a quilt.

If you ever have the opportunity to go and listen to David or take a class or view his work it is well worth it!

And I just have to share this adorable hand appliqued quilt that was shown at guild's Show n Tell last night. I don't know the lady's name who made this, but she started it in the 70's and just recently finished it and it's definitely in vogue again today. She used clothing of family members and each owl is hand appliqued using the satin stitch. That's a lot of stitching! She said if she had started this quilt today she certainly wouldn't have done it by hand. How our quilting has changed in the last 30 years!