2014 Obon Festival Corn-on-the-Cob Report – Chairperson: Ron Murakami
Event: Saturday, July 26
Recommendations for 2015:
1. Consider a later starting time than 4:00. Not sure why it was set so early since the
crowd seems to be very small at 4:00. It makes a longer day for our volunteers.
2. Consider not having the Okinawan taiko group perform since the crowd is still
relatively small at that time. Most of the people present seem to be either part of
the group or are family or friends of the group.
3. Try not to give responsibility for two main foods to one toban, or at least consider
the number of people actually available in the toban before assigning food
responsibilities. After combining tobans for 2014 and with other changes, we
ended up with fewer toban members than in previous years.
4. Assign two people in advance as cashiers for each shift. Or consider having two
people as cashiers with one person not starting until an hour or so after the
concession starts and the other ending about an hour before the concession closes.
Should consult with the BBQ pork sandwich toban about this.
5. The corn quality was generally good but there were a surprising number of culls
and unusable ears. If the carton count is the same in 2015, recommend ordering
just 6 cartons, especially if the price is kept at $3. I don’t know what prices are
for this type of concession, but $2.50 seems more reasonable. If the price is
$2.50, then recommend ordering 7 cartons (336 ears).
6. Buy or have available at least two ice chests, about 12-15 gallons in size, and
have them marked for corn. Corn does not sell fast enough to warrant the larger
size ice chests we have, and the larger chests don’t hold the temperature very well
for the quantity of corn being held.
Ordered:
7 cartons corn (7 cartons x48 ears/carton = 336 ears), Inaba Farms, from Carpinito Bros.
1. Started with 6 cartons (288 ears), but had close to 30 ears of unusable corn, so
ordered additional carton. Randy Okimoto picked up corn from Carpinto Bros.
After sorting ended up with 284 good quality ears and about 40 culls. Remaining
12 ears were simply unusable (too immature). 251 ears of corn were sold and
remaining were served for lunch on Sunday after cleanup. The culls were cooked
and given to temple volunteers during the event.
2. Butter
3. Single serving salt packets
4. Single serving pepper packets
5. Paper hot dog boats
6. Three temple propane tanks
7. Borrowed two colander baskets for boiling corn, one from Charlene Grinolds and
one from Gayle Takemura
8. Had two extra camp stove type burners from Dennis Nishimura for heating water.
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Friday, July 25 Prep:
Equipment:
1. 2 large steel bowls to temporarily hold shucked corn until corn carton became
available
2. 2 large garb age cans for temporarily holding husks (emptied directly into
compost bins)
3. 2 cutting boards
4. 2 knives
5. 1 regular 8 ft long table
6. 1 short table for holding cartons of corn
7. Note: gloves are not required since the corn is not ready-to-eat
Process:
Four people (three from Jul-Aug toban) shucked corn and trimmed off bad parts. Should
have trimmed off all white tips at the same time to cut down on Saturday prep.
Temporarily placed shucked corn in large steel bowls and when empty cartons became
available used original cartons to hold corn. Caution, gap in bottom of carton is too large
to contain corn so cover gap with cardboard or heavy paper. Store corn in walk-in cooler.
Took approximately 45” (including cleanup), but allow 1 hour to allow time to trim white
tips from all ears.
Saturday Rinsing Corn:
Equipment:
1. large colander
2. tea towel
3. cutting board & knife
Process:
Health department started requirement to rinse vegetables under running water. Using
sink in outside rice shed, rinsed each ear under running water, using wet tea towel to
remove silk strands. Trimmed off white tips and any other remaining defects as needed.
Drained ears in colander and placed in rectangular steel pans (warming tray type pans, 40
ears per pan). Covered with foil, used marking pen to write “#1 corn 40” (or “corn culls”
on last container), and stored in walk-in cooler. Rinsing process took one person 90
minutes. Could have finished in about 60 minutes if white tips of corn had been trimmed
on previous day. Started at 12:30 and finished just in time to allow rice crew to start
washing rice. Need to coordinate with rice crew.
Saturday Boiling Corn:
Equipment:
2 temple “tea” burners
3 filled propane tanks with hoses & regulators
2 large thinner tall pots with covers
2 deep colanders (borrowed from Charlene Grinolds & Gail Takemura) to fit pots
1 deep fryer hook (borrowed from Gail T)
2 pots for heating water
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1 stainless container for holding water to submerge tongs
1 set of tongs (generally not needed)
2 insulated containers (only 1 smaller container borrowed from Ron Murakami was used
Process:
Set up two “tea” burners outside multipurpose room on porch. Brought water to rolling
boil each time before adding corn. Boiled 10 ears per batch for 4 minutes. Used deep
fryer hook to life colander to drain corn. Transferred corn to insulated container. We
used a borrowed xx gallon container since the ones at temple were too large. Using too
large a container allows the corn to cool too fast so holding temperature above 135
degrees cannot be maintained. It was originally suggested to boil corn for 3 minutes, but
testing at home indicated 3 minutes would likely be too short a time to maintain holding
temperature.
Tried to have at least two people available for boiling corn and a third as a runner
between the cooking area and the booth. Would have been better to avoid havihowng too
young of student acting as a runner since they were not able to assess needs in the booth
as well. Additional people were sometimes in the cooking area (family members of one
person). Recommend two people doing the cooking since one can also get uncooked
corn from the walk-in cooler and can provide melted butter when needed. Recommend
buying two ice chests, approximately 15-20 gallon size.
Saturday Serving Corn:
Equipment:
1. Insulated container (ice chest) for holding corn [suggest no larger than xx gallon
size]
2. Paper hot dog “boats”
3. Mini crockpot (borrowed from Charlene Grinolds) or similar for hot-holding
melted butter
4. Basting brush
5. Individual packets of salt & pepper
6. Stainless container to hold salt & pepper packets
7. Napkins
Process:
During the planning meetings, it had been decided to sell corn in the same concession
booth as Barbeque Pulled Pork Sandwiches. The cashier(s) sold both products and were
asked to keep track of the sales. The first cashier had been assigned from the Oct-Dec
toban. A second cashier was added from available people when it became clear that the
waiting line was getting too long. It is recommended that two people be assigned in
advance as cashiers for each shift, although first hour (about 4:00-5:00) and last hour
(about 7:30-8:30) were very slow.
The average selling rate was 1 ear per minute, so this can help prevent building up too
much of a backlog of unsold corn and to help predict when corn needed to be cooked.
Some periods may have had up to 2 to 3 ears per minutes and much of the time had well
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less than 1 ear per minute. One person in the booth indicated corn was needed earlier
than it should have been cooked so there were usually about 12-25 ears in the ice chest.
An early check of the corn indicated a holding temperature of about 125-128 degrees so
too much corn should not be cooked at once.
Butter was melted in a small pot on the kitchen range over low heat, stirring occasionally
to prevent burning. Poured melted butter into mini crockpot. The empty crockpot easily
held 3 cubes of melted butter. The crockpot worked well except the butter eventually
overheated. Suggest alternating between having crockpot plugged in and unplugged to
prevent burning and bubbling over. One person transferred corn from ice chest to paper
boat. Second person used basting brush to brush on butter (cashier needed to ask about
butter when taking orders). Melted total of 8 ¾ cubes of butter. Could have gotten by
with less but needed to toss out some burned butter.
Stogie Kawabata had been assigned by the BBQ Sandwich crew (Oct-Dec toban) as a
corn server for the first shift but since Mary Cogger became available from the corn crew
(part of Jan-Mar toban), Mary helped Kathryn Natsuhara on the first shift and Craig
Cogger volunteered to help with cashier in the booth. During the second shift, a different
person worked as a second cashier (not sure who handled this responsibility).
Notes:
Corn-on-the-cob has not been served for many years so reports are not generally
available and the cooking method has changed (using portable propane burners rather
than cooking on the kitchen ranges). Health Department requirements are also clearly
defined now so previous handling and temperature holding methods are no longer
adequate.
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