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I think many of us have bought frozen vegetables of kinds and in amounts that we normally wouldn’t, just to make sure we will always have some vegetables in the house, and, with that thought in mind, the other day I shared my grandmother’s recipe for frozen peas. Today, I’ve got some ideas about how to dress up frozen corn.

The real seasonal treat, of course, is fresh-picked corn on the cob, steamed or boiled. But in the middle of winter frozen corn can give you a little taste of summer, and yet I found plain frozen corn a bit lacking. Thinking about how corn has a wonderful natural sweetness and works well with butter, I improvised and discovered how much better it is when you sauté the kernels in butter, rather than just putting butter on top of steamed corn.

Pearl was my mother’s mother, whom we grandchildren called Nena (something the eldest cousin came up with, I suppose) and she was a phenomenal cook. I still have a tiny little notepad holding some of her recipes, with some random slips of paper tucked inside scribbled with more recipes, most with the sort of skeletal instructions for someone who is so skilled she doesn’t need to be told what to do. In fact, these recipes are not even her favorites, the ones she made for us over and over, for which she needed nothing written down.

One time, some years ago, my mother was watching me prepare vegetables for some recipe or another – I have no recollection what. She said I reminded her of Nena, they way I was paying attention to each piece before cutting it, noticing and removing any damaged areas. To me, that was such a treasured compliment – to see a reflection of Nena, such a wonderful cook in what I was doing, and to recognize my appreciation for my produce, just like Nena.

I broke down yesterday and used the penultimate package from the freezer of Fike’s maple-brown sugar sausage. And we ate those sausages with both joy and sorrow – joy because they were so good, and sorrow because we only have one package left.

For the past few summers when we’ve rented “our” cabin on a quiet lake in Maine, we’ve been able to get all our meat at Fike’s Custom Cutting, a small butcher shop on a quiet country road in Readfield. Brandon always had such outstanding meat – steaks, burger meat, chops – and out of all the sausages he made, the maple-brown sugar sausage quickly became our favorite. Every summer we would bring home several packages to ration over the winter. These sausages have a deep, complex flavor from the maple and brown sugar, and a nice hint of spicy heat that complements the sweetness.