Corn smut
Cuitlacoche or huitlacoche is a delicacy. It’s not recognized as such by most US Americans, who tend to scrape corn smut off with their noses wrinkled. I’m sure I was the same before visiting my uncle in Mexico years ago and eating this fabulous fungus. Tastes like buttered zucchini in a quesadilla (as in, very little taste, soft texture, great companion to cheese or garlic).
Our corn crop is doing well for how little we’ve nurtured it, but sadly we’ve only found one ear sporting smut. In the US most farmers would be dismayed to find they have smutty ears, since the corn yield decreases as the fungus grows. But here the smut is worth more than the corn, and since it actually has more nutrition than corn, might as well spread the spores in your field like local farmers do!
One of our corn patches, in June and August:
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