Charlottesville Blog of the Week: Crown of Corn

I’m a big fan of the one-year blog project, such as the blog immortalized by Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in Julie and Julia, based, in part, to Julie Powell’s blog about cooking her way through the entire Mastering the Art of French Cooking — in 365 days. I was inspired by such blogs to begin my Life of Pie project, as I began my side career as a competitive pie baker.

That’s why, as soon as I heard of it, I couldn’t wait to see Jess Meehan’s new blog Crown of Corn. Jess has presented herself with a challenge — to go without corn — in any form — for one year. Inspired by Omnivore’s Dilemma (on TV, I stumbled over that one and came home to sufficient ridicule –  family fans are brutal) and Food Inc. Jessica’s intent is to be fully aware of what she’s consuming — corn is pervasive; a hidden ingredient and filler in many of our foods. Going without corn will be difficult, to say the least, but perhaps even more difficult than this blogger first imagined, learning quickly that nearly all salad dressings have a corn-based thickening agent in them; that baking powder contains corn; that corn syrup is in lots of yummy foods. A corn-based ingredient exists in gums and mints as well — as well as several types of alcohol that are born from fermented corn.

Click over to http://crownofcorn.blogspot.com/ and cheer Jess on (and tell her I sent ya) — it’s going to be a tough year.