Life Without Corn

      Being of simple tastes and a small wallet, I have rarely ventured beyond my usual staples of collegiate cuisine.  I mostly stick to quesadillas (only requiring cheese and tortillas), turkey burgers (add bun and ketchup= awesome), and ramen (do I really need to explain this one?).  And I usually bought these nifty ingredients at the local Safeway, where I am a member of their nifty Card Club.  When faced with the task of taking corn out of my diet, I knew I had to rethink my whole approach to mealtime.  First, I did a little research and found this great list of foods to look for if one has a corn allergy.

          Jackpot.

     The list, found at http://corn-freefoods.blogspot.com/,  was full of any sort of food one might need to look for, all the while avoiding that ever present pest: corn.  I noticed much of the items on the list had certain words in common.  "Organic"was huge.  But then again, organic can mean all sorts of things depending on the product.  More or less, it carries the notion that the food was not processed or made with hormones etc.  I started to think, where could one find lots of organics and other more “natural foods” that do not come from ginormous factories of cow slaughter and the like.  Of course! The Moscow Co-Op.  Can’t go wrong there.

So, now I was tasked with scouring the shelves looking for ways to make balanced (yeah right) meals for a whole week.  I condensed it down into a formula.  I had to come up with something to eat for lunch and dinner for seven days (I don’t eat breakfast, nor do I need a lecture on all the reasons I should).  So, what for lunch?

Keep it simple. 

I could still do some quesadillas.  I just had to make sure the tortillas were in fact made with wheat or flour and no corn.  Ah-ha.  Ezekial brand tortillas use strictly wheat.  Not as tasty as a processed tortilla, but for the sake of science, it shall do.  Make it two packs (that way I can maybe use this for some dinners as well) and some organically grown cheese (I’m not sure that this guarantees that the cows were not fed corn at all, but my thought process was that if this producer took so much pride in their organic process, surely they would feed the cows grass; perhaps I am too trusting).  In order to get a little variety in my mid day meal, lets get some Ezekial bread as well.  Add some nice organic peanut butter and Jelly and we are good to go.  Just make sure there are no unnatural sugars in there.  Peanut Butter is nothing but peanuts and a dash of sea salt and the jam has natural Cane sugar!  Well, I’m convinced.

Now, for dinners.  I’ve got those tortillas, so what if I made some tacos.  Throw in some ground elk meat.  I’ve got seasoning at home.  It’s McCormick and it looks like it has no corn byproducts in there (except maybe processed salt; damn), so I’m keeping this one pretty close to the belt.  So that’ll take care of dinner for half the nights, mixing in quesadillas as well.  For the last couple nights, I’m thinking pasta.  I found some noodles containing only organic wheat, then some tomato sauce with no corn to speak of, just vegetables and organic ones at that.  Let’s put some meat in that sauce.  I found some great looking lamb sausages, and I love lamb sausage.  Wonderfully enough, the lambs are guaranteed pasture fed, as they are free-range lambs.  And I think that about covers the week.  So I’ve fed myself well enough (perhaps better than usual), but can I afford this?   

Ezekial Tortillas x2	$6.18
Ezekial Bread	$5.39
Organic Valley Mexican Mix Cheese x2	$9.18
MaraNatha Peanut Butter	$5.49
Europe Superfruit Jam	$2.99
Lucini Spicy Tuscan Tomato Sauce	$3.84
Western Buffalo CO. Ground Elk	$8.31
Anderson Range Lamb Sausage	$6.15

Total:                     $47.53

Tax                            x1.06

Grand Total           $50.38

        In my old ways, I spent around one hundred fifty to two hundred dollars a month on food, so around forty dollars a week.  Not too much less than this diet.  For one thing, my old pattern took little prep time, which is valuable in the fast-paced college lifestyle.  Will I be truly attempting to remove corn from my diet anytime soon?  Doubtful.  What about you?  Did this experiment change your opinions at all?  the main worry with corn being everywhere is simply our reliance on it.  With the summer droughts this year, our greatest ingredient was threatened.  So what will happen if corn were to stop or drastically slow down in production?  Would you just book it to the Co-Op?  You might just find me there.