Roadside Corn

I passed a truck at the side of the road selling corn today. I thought about stopping but didn't.

I used to see roadside vegetable stands all up and down the North Carolina coast, back when I drove back and forth between Wilmington and Beaufort, NC, almost every other weekend while doing my masters research (fish ecology). That would've been 1998 or 1999. I thought about stopping then, too, but never did. Back then I had no money. Graduate students generally don't.

Maybe the corn truck will be back sometime when I don't already have too much food in the fridge. Then I'll buy some.

Instead, I have leftovers from a Korean restaurant I went to over the weekend. They aren't kidding when they say their cold noodle soups are cold; mine came with broth ice cubes to make sure it stayed cold while I ate it. The meal also came with five little "side dishes" - kimchee, chili tofu strips, chili cucumber slices, chili radish shreds, and bean sprouts (the only non-spicy item). They go great with plain white rice. Sometimes I wonder if I don't go to that restaurant just to get side dishes.

I like lots of variety in my meals. There's another restaurant, a southern-style diner called Sweet Potatoes that specializes in different things one can make with sweet potatoes, and they have a very wide selection of vegetables. I go there for those. Last time I went, it was for one fish dish (came with two vegetables) and an additional all-vegetable dish (three more vegetables). The leftovers were excellent.

I'll have to go to Sweet Potatoes again sometime soon. In the meantime, tonight's dinner was Korean side dishes with plain white rice.