Corn

Have you eaten corn on the cob before? What other ways have you eaten corn? I would guess that you have also had creamed corn or corn mixed in with other vegetables. I am almost certain that you have also had popcorn! Did you know that corn was first grown in Mexico and Central America? El Salvador was one of the first places to ever have corn!

I eat corn every day in El Salvador, sometimes for all three meals! Although sometimes I eat corn on the cob, most of the time I eat corn tortillas. The tortillas in El Salvador are much thicker than the tortillas you use to make tacos. A traditional Salvadoran lunch or dinner always comes one or two tortillas, but some people love tortillas so much they will eat three or four! Another corn dish is also the most popular Salvadoran food! It is called a pupusa. A pupusa is made with the same dough as a tortilla, but a filling is added before it is cooked. The most common pupusas are stuffed with cheese and beans, but you can also put pork or shrimp inside a pupusa. Pupusas are served with a tomato sauce and a special coleslaw called cortido. Sometimes we eat pupusas for dinner or sometimes we eat them for breakfast.

Salvadoran tortillas are thicker and smaller than Mexican tortillas.  

Many people in El Salvador grow corn. Just like in rural Illinois, there are a lot of corn fields here. A big difference, however, is that Salvadoran don’t use tractors or machines that farmers in Illinois use. This is because El Salvador is very mountainous and tractors won’t work in many places here. It is very hard work to take care of a corn field by hand!

This hilly and rocky corn field needs to be taken care of by hand. 

We just celebrated the first harvest of the corn in El Salvador. In early August the corn has finally grown enough for people to eat it. Each stalk of corn can produce two types of corn: elote and maiz. Elote is what the corn is called when it is first ready to be eaten. If you leave elote on the corn stalk for a longer period of time it turns into maiz. You can make different food with elote than you can with maiz, and they taste different.

Picking elote from the corn stalks. If
we left this corn on the stalks longer it
would become maiz.  

When towns celebrate the first harvest of the corn, people can buy tamales, atole, which is a drink made out of corn and cinnamon and elote that you eat right off the cob. 

A quick snack of atole and elote. 

There is also usually dancing and singing! My favorite tradition, however, is electing a queen of the corn. Many rural towns have a corn-husk dress making contest. Girls and their families will work for over 3 months to create dresses made completely out of corn materials! There is a fashion show off all the corn dresses, and the winner becomes the queen of the corn for that year.

Contestants wait to show off their corn dresses! 

Here is the Queen of the Corn 2016 

 Abrazos,
Mrs. Mulherin


Here are some questions that go along with my blog. See if you can answer all the questions! 

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