Black corn bread

I was curious on the flavor of some of my crazy corn, so I decided to cook some up into corn bread and see what I got.

So I took some of my black corn, and plain yellow corn for comparison

Ground them up into corn meal

And made corn bread -- half yellow, half black.

Is it just me, or does the black corn one look like a brownie? It didn't taste like a brownie, but the flavor was different and delicious. The yellow corn bread tasted like what I'm used to, but the black one was... how to describe it? It had an earthy almost meaty flavor to it. The yellow one tasted like it would be lovely with honey and butter. The black one I wanted to eat with a warm, thick winter stew. I admit I was surprised at how different they tasted... I'm going to have to do more corn taste tests here and start breeding for flavor as much as for beautiful colors.

On the radio...

I was on public radio's The Splendid Table again this weekend! Talking more about the tomato I've bred for the host, and growing delicious tomatoes in general. If you missed it, you can listen online here: https://soundcloud.com/thesplendidtable/joseph-tychonievich-on-the

Corn breeding projects

I've been playing around with corn breeding for a few years now. I harvested this year's crop this morning, and have been very pleased with my progress!

This BLACK one was a surprise. I was breeding for other traits, but this popped up and I LIKE it. Glossy, and just about as close to black as you can get. I'm thinking of calling it 'Black Gleam'. One more year to grow it out and make sure there aren't off types in the seed, and this one might be done!

The husks are very dark red as well, and even the stems of the plants are black as you can see in my not-very-good picture. The stand of them looked better before the groundhogs got it into their tiny brains to start tearing the plants down. These black stems were actually my goal for this population, so I'm quite happy about that. And pleased that the beautiful dark kernels came along for the ride...

 On the OTHER extreme, I've been aiming towards this color mix for a while and just love it. I'm calling it 'Mother of Pearl' I really like the delicate pinks and blues and lavenders. Some of the plants have too much dark blue in them, but I think I'm getting close to my goal with this one.

 A total surprise... from a population of white popcorn, these ones have just a touch of pink at the top of each kernel. I really like it... I'm calling it 'Pink Blush' for now, but I keep thinking it needs a better name. Suggestions would be appreciated.

I really like the mix of colors from this population, LOVE the glossy kernels, and they also were really good growers, with big full attractive ears. Too much boring yellow in the mix, but I'm going to go through and pull out the best colors and sort them out into a series of different color strains.