Mama's Cornbread

Don't you want some cornbread? I thought so. Every southern food book I've ever read (and that has been a few, believe me) shares memories of their mama's cornbread. In the south, cornbread usually means unsweetened cornbread baked in a sizzling hot skillet. Super sweet cornbread baked in a pyrex pan was cake not cornbread. If my Mamaw had set a plate of that down in front of my Papaw he would have thrown it out to his hound dog. No offense to lovers of yankee cornbread but "real" cornbread is a serious thing in the south, impostors could be shot!

My Mama is famous for her cornbread. I love love love it and must have it at least once a week. Her crispy, buttery cornbread is one of the only things I have a deep craving for year round. It goes with everything, beans, soup, salad, butter, anything really. I make it for breakfast sometimes and there is never a crumb left. Now I make two pans of it so everyone can have plenty. Made with fresh ground cornmeal and flour, you can't beat it for a healthy quick bread.

I will now ask my Mama to look aside while I tell you that I have slightly modified her recipe to fit my cooking so it's not her exact recipe. Honey instead of sugar, fewer eggs and less butter. Okay Mama, you can look back. So get out your skillet and let's make a pan (pone as Mamaw used to call it) of cornbread.

The first step is to preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Set your iron skillet in there to heat up too. A hot skillet is the secret to good crusty cornbread. Measure a cup of flour, cup of cornmeal, 1 tablespoon baking powder and a teaspoon of salt into a large bowl. Stir it to mix all your dry ingredients together.

Enlist a handy kid to mix up 1 and 1/4 cup of milk, 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon of honey in a measuring cup or small bowl. If there are no handy kids, just beat it together yourself. All the same and you probably have cleaner hands. I hope so anyway.

When your oven and iron skillet are good and hot, set the skillet out on your stove and melt 2 tablespoons of real butter in it (Don't you like my square pan? It was Grandma's.). Pour the wet mixture into the dry and give it a few stirs, then pour the melted butter quickly into the batter. Stir it up to mix the butter in. Be sure to not burn yourself with the skillet, it's super hot! Pour the batter into the skillet.

Can you see what's happening? Look at the edge of the skillet and see how the batter is foaming up. It is searing in the hot skillet and that is what gives you the magical golden crust. Bake it for 20 minutes in your hot oven and then flip it out onto a big platter. Flipping it out of the pan is a bit of a trick, I still catch myself holding my breath every time I turn do it. Just have faith and go for it.

Then all that's left is to cut it up and serve wedges or squares of hot golden goodness to all the lucky people sitting around your table. You'll be glad you did.

Pantry Cooking: Greek Pasta

Greek Pasta with Lemon and Feta

Once you are rolling on building your pantry, you might wonder what you can make with some of the items or if you will be stuck eating the same old things all the time. The good news is that with a little bit of creativity there is no limit to what you can cook up in your kitchen. Last Friday I was inspired by this recipe for Greek Chicken Pasta over at allrecipes.com (I tried to link it but couldn't get it to work. If you want the recipe just type in the recipe name at the website.) and decided to adapt it to use what I had. In my pantry I had lots of pasta, a case of canned diced tomatoes, a can of black olives, an onion and garlic. I'll never be caught without fresh garlic, there is no substitute. My fresh ingredients were the feta and lemon. We are eating 90% vegetarian so I left out the chicken and we never missed it. So we had the lovely pasta dish you see above for our family dinner. It was quick, easy and delicious. I'm excited to show you more of what I cook from my pantry and would love to hear what you are cooking from yours. If you have a blog you can show us what you are whipping up, just add a link to your comment. Happy eating!

On Being Primarily Herbivore

Several people have asked me in the past few months about our family's transition to eating vegetarian and I finally have a quiet moment to talk about it. The quiet moment is thanks to my husband and brother taking four of the kids to the park while the baby naps. Sweet bliss!

Early this spring our pediatrician recommended that I read a book called The China Study. It is an amazing book about a scientist's career long study of nutrition, particularly animal protein and it's link to various diseases and overall health. If you are a food and nutrition nerd like I am, you will find this book fascinating. The author details how his study led his family to eat a vegetarian and eventually vegan diet. Like him, I never imagined my family would go in that direction, it seemed pretty extreme. However, after reading this book I can't continue to eat and feed my family the same.

Some disclaimers, we have eaten several vegetarian meals a week for budget reasons for years so the idea of building a meal around something besides a piece of meat wasn't a huge stretch for me. Also, I have the most willing husband in the world when it comes to trying new foods and new ways of eating. I think it comes from being single and starving for a decade before we met and were married. If you have subsisted on ketchup and pickles for years, lentils look pretty tasty. Actually, I couldn't have found a better man for trying new things on, he's game for anything as long as it tastes good. Our kids are young and we have worked hard training them to eat what they are served so there isn't any problem there. I cook one meal and everyone eats it. If there is a particular thing that I know they don't love then I will serve them a smaller portion and eventually they get used to it or find that it's not yucky. We have always eaten lots of vegetables and salads and they have enjoyed them since they started eating regular food. When the younger ones see their siblings and parents enjoying broccoli and squash they want to get in on the action.

Another thing is that we are eating meat about once a week, usually when we eat at a restaurant or with someone else. Joe loves grilling burgers so we have done that a few times. I'm not planning any meat into my menus but if we have company he will stop by and pick up some meat. When we do, I try to have lots of vegetables and salad to go with it so I can mainly eat that. On occasions where we are eating at someone else's home I will eat more vegetables and keep the meat dish as the smallest part of my meal. The kids are free to eat as they like from what is offered to them but I have noticed they focus on the vegetables too.

Dairy has proved to be the most difficult thing to eliminate. I have only been at this for a few months but the dairy substitutes are quite a transition for me. So I am still buying and using cheese and butter but the amount I use is probably a quarter of what it was before. Exploring vegan eating is going to be an ongoing process for me and one that I am excited about. In my cooking I try to avoid any animal products but don't get too strict with it.

As far as the benefits of vegetarian eating, I am amazed. I have not gained as much weight this pregnancy and don't have as much trouble with heart burn issues. Dairy is the big one for me in that respect. Ice cream doesn't taste quite so good when you know you won't be able to sleep later. The biggest change though has been in the total stop of low blood sugar spells. For years I have had hypoglycemia and since I stopped eating animal products it has gone away completely. I never realized that my diet was creating an imbalance that resulted in my body making excess insulin, I just thought I needed to eat more. Now that I have a healthier diet that isn't a problem at all. Joe has lost weight and we all have more energy. Overall it's been a great change and new way of living for us. I can't see us going back to our old diet anytime soon but for now we are taking it slowly and trying not to be too rigid.

Coming soon will be some of our weekly menus with recipes if you are interested in trying some good family friendly vegetarian meals with your family. Hopefully you will enjoy them as much as we have.

Greek Stuffed Peppers

In our new venture into full-scale vegetarianism we have come across quite a few hits and this stuffed pepper recipe is one of them. I guess you could call it a formula instead of a recipe since it is so flexible, kind of a use what you have and what you like kind of thing. If you like red peppers more than green, go for it. Maybe olives or feta doesn't float your boat, substitute something else or leave it out. Personally, I could eat feta cheese until the cows come home or at least until my kids catch me with it and make me share! So here we go, Greek Stuffed Peppers.

Throw some brown (or white) rice in a bowl. I figure on about 1/2 cup for each pepper half so I used 5 cups this time. Also, this is a great dish to use leftover rice in. I try to cook extra rice whenever I'm cooking brown rice since it takes longer to cook. Leftover rice is good for breakfast or using in a main dish like this one. Now, add the chopped black olives. I guess if you were really being Greek you would use Kalamata olives but we go for good old black olives around here. I keep a can or two in the pantry for our "finger food lunches".

While you are chopping the olives and measuring rice, you can saute some onion and garlic in some olive oil. How much onion you need depends on how many peppers you are cooking. I used 1 large onion and 2 big cloves of garlic. Onions and garlic are inexpensive and add so much flavor you can almost never use too much as long as you cook it properly. With something like stuffed peppers that won't bake very long you would want to cook the onions completely before adding them to the other ingredients. Crunchy onions aren't a great thing in some dishes.

Here you see my filling, rice, olives, sauteed onions and garlic, diced cherry tomatoes and a package of feta cheese. It's seasoned with salt, lots of black pepper and some oregano. Let me warn you, this filling is fabulous. I have to fill the pepper halves before I taste it or I can't stop myself. It would make a great dinner just like this without the peppers.

Speaking of peppers. While I have been chopping and sauteing, measuring and mixing, my pepper halves have been roasting. Just slice them in half and clean out the seeds. I lay them cut side down to roast so they don't get watery. Word of advice here, foil is your friend. Use foil with this recipe because peppers make a mess. It's much easier to throw out the foil than clean a pan. I'd put foil on my kids it it would make them easier to clean.

After the peppers roast for about 25 minutes (400 degree oven), turn them over, sprinkle with salt and scoop the filling into them. I always put extra salt on the peppers before filling because it seems like they tend to be bland tasting. Salt really perks them up. So don't be shy with the salt. After they are all happily stuffed, pop them back into the oven until they are hot all the way through, about 10 minutes, then serve with a big salad and some bread. Oh, and while they are baking you can eat the rest of the filling out of the bowl!

The Accidental Spinach Salad

Today my lunch was the result of an unprecedented event, leftover cheese grits. In an odd turn of fate, there were leftover cheese grits the other morning and after a few days in the fridge, I had a firm disc of grits, or polenta as it is fashionably called now, that I could slice and fry in a bit of olive oil in a hot skillet. The results were good enough to warrant making a batch of grits in the future just to fry. I layered it over some fresh spinach and topped that with some sauteed mushrooms and havarti cheese (my vice this week) and then enjoyed the whole divine concoction for my lunch. Not a recipe really but consider it encouragement. Look at what is lurking in your fridge and be creative in combining it into something original that could just become a new favorite. If you've got, use it!