Oh Hell, She's Cookin' Now: Foil Pack Garlic Butter Sausage and Veggies

In terms of cooking, February was a non-productive month. I didn't really do too much. Instead of asking yourselves what I ate, just assume that I lived off sandwiches and the souls of dead aardvarks.

I did cook one thing: Foil pack garlic butter sausage and veggies, from Chelsea' Messy Apron.

In all honesty, I wasn't hugely impressed with this dish, really. I found it, perhaps, a bit salty...and for me, that's saying a lot, because I think if I had to be a Biblical character, it would be a pillar of salt. And I'm pretty sure I did't add much salt when I prepped the food. Maybe it was the smoked sausage itself that was the culprit?

But...would I make it again? Perhaps, especially if I am struggling for meal inspo. It's got lovely colors and textures to it, and if I can find a way for the sodium to chill, I'd enjoy this mean. Except...

One thing worth mentioning: the recipe called for cobs of corn, cut into smaller slices. Not sliced off the cob, but more like... the ear itself was presented as being coined, really. Despite my enthusiasm for consuming corn--I've gnawed away at so many ears over the years--I have precious little experience (read: NONE) cooking corn. But I've interacted with enough of those damned corncobs to be vaguely apprehensive...as I eyed the out-of-season corn that I had picked up from Kroger, I pondered, "can it be that easy to slice through a corn cob? Those fuckers seem pretty solid."

Well, I wasn't wrong. I hauled out a knife, positioned it about a quarter of from the end of the cob, and began to cut. Once I got past the relatively soft, yielding, butter-yellow corn kernels, and encountered the actual cob, I stopped. As I suspected, the cob itself arrested the progress of my knife. I pressed harder, and then harder again. I cut. I hacked. And then I put down my knife and switched over to a serrated blade and SAWED. And then hacked again. No progress, other than the fact that my knife seemed embedded about 1/3 of the way into a cob. Had I chosen to wield the knife, there would be an ear of corn, precariously impaled on a bread knife. I would have looked like a Child of the Corn who wasn't particularly adept at...whatever it was that The Children of the Corn did. I consulted with Doctor Google, who advised me to "snap the ear in half." So I did. But that still seemed...not coined.

Finally, in exasperation, I took the knife by its handle (the blade still embedded in the unyielding corn), lifted above my head, and brought both knife and corn down with an almighty and unforgiving THWACK against the cutting board. And behold! A portion of the corncob was sliced off. A bigger portion of the actual corners were now covering me the, the kitchen counter, the floor, and possibly my curious cats, but whatevs. The corn had been coined. Or beheaded. Henry VIII would have been proud.

Lather, rinse, repeat, with the remainder of that ear of corn, plus two more. It was messy. It was ridiculous. It was like an abattoir of corn. It was carnage. No...

I'm sorry, I have to do it.

It was cornage.

(If any of you have a better idea for how to slice through an ear of corn, for the love of god, let me know.  Maybe we need to see if there are any guillotines left over from the Reign of Terror? Robespierre, dude. Call me.)