We went to the Broadway farmers market today and, as far as I can tell, brought back some of everything. Shelling beans, tomatillos, chiles, peaches, apples, onions, shallots, garlic, salad mix, other things I’m forgetting, and corn.

The corn is gone. I converted it to pudding.

I learned about corn pudding in the June issue of Saveur. In the photo, it looked like some kind of corn casserole, but then the ingredients turned out to be: corn, salt, butter. I Googled around today looking at other corn pudding recipes, and couldn’t find anything half as simple as Saveur’s. Other recipes had things like herbs and spices, eggs, milk, flour, canned corn, all of which are unnecessary.

Here’s how I made corn pudding–apologies to the original recipe, which called for three times as much corn and some sort of corn surgical device we don’t keep on hand.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Take four fresh ears of corn and grate them on the big-holed side of a box grater. Keep grating, flipping each ear over top-to-bottom after a while, until the corn is no longer giving up much milk. You’ll know you’ve done well if the ear is *much* lighter when you’re done and your arm hurts. You’ll have a big pile of wet corn mush. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon salt and put it in a small oval baking dish. (I used the always fashionable Emile Henry Le Potier.) Dot the top with 2 tablespoons butter. Bake until bubble and nicely browned, 45 to 60 minutes.

Summed up in one word, corn pudding is *sticky.* The browned, crispy bits are even stickier. Five out of five dentists agree that you should never eat corn pudding. I had to floss and brush immediately after dinner. But I’m going to make it again anyway.

Iris and I were playing a game where we put on pretend costumes to scare Laurie. We hit a snag when we ran out onto the balcony making what we thought were very scary monster noises, but our neighbor Brenda laughed.

**Me:** I’m going to be an evil sushi chef.

**Iris:** People won’t be scared, they will just laugh.

**Me:** I’ll have a big sharp knife so they’ll be scared. What are you going to be?

**Iris:** You need to think of something very scary for me, not funny.

**Me:** Okay, how about an evil magician?

**Iris:** That’s funny.

**Me:** A wolf that bites people?

**Iris:** That will just make people laugh. I’ll think of my own costume.

*(pause)*

**Iris:** I’ve got it! An evil English muffin!

**Me:** (cracks up)

**Iris:** Okay, not that.

Tonight, it was the infamous pirate captain K. Rool’s birthday party. (It was also his birthday party on Tuesday, but one prerogative of a pirate captain is to have as many birthday parties as he desires.) Each guest gave him a present. Two of his presents were a passport and sunscreen, so he decided to go to Barbados. While drinking rum and eating sugarcane in Barbados, K. Rool noted that on the neighboring island of Aruba, all the guests at his birthday party had gathered to eat ice cream, including light switch flavor, which is made with sugarcane and coconut. Luckily, an ice cream truck pulled up on Barbados and K. Rool asked for an ice cream sandwich. They were all out, so he got ice cream bonbons instead. The end.

If anyone tells me that Aruba and Barbados aren’t neighboring islands, I’m sending K. Rool after them.

All I wanted for my birthday was man-eating cupcakes.

This week on [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/), I get all worked up about:

Organic Baby Food

> Dr. Susanna’s is based in Seattle, and its shtick is international foods. There are currently six flavors. I tried Tokyo Tum Tum and Lullaby Thai; also available are Sweetie Tahiti, Baby Dal, and so on. They’re organic and, according to the website, “favor local farmers,” which makes no sense, since the products are sold nationwide. I guess the farmers could be local to the United States.