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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Miss You Much

My friend Becky blogged this week about her adventures in sweet potato cornbread. Cornbread...mmmmm. I was already missing my grandmother Rebecca today because every time I hear some interesting political tidbit (every five minutes in this season), I want to call her, but the cornbread made me want to call her that much more. She passed last December. I often still forget I can't call her anymore.

I lived out in New Mexico from 1997 to 2000, and I got a craving for her cornbread while I was 2,500 miles away, as she made the only cornbread I ever really loved. It was crispy on the outside, and not at all cake-like on the inside. My grandfather used to like it with soup beans or as a snack broken up into a glass of buttermilk. She was of the school that did not believe in measuring, so when I called her to ask for her recipe, she couldn't give it to me as there was no recipe. To satisfy my craving, she made a few batches of it to figure out a recipe. Don't tell my mom, but mine is totally better than hers as a result. The secret is pre-heating the cast iron skillet with a little bit of oil in the oven so that when you pour the batter in, it gets a nice crisp on the outside. And no sugar in the cornbread. It is not cake.

Rebecca Young's Crispy Cornbread

Ingredients:
Self-rising corn meal, 2 cups
Self-rising flour, 1/2 cup
Egg, 1
Baking soda, 1/2 tsp.
Buttermilk
Vegetable oil

Put about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet. Preheat oven to 425 degrees with the cast iron skillet in the oven. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, and add just enough buttermilk to give the mixture the consistency of pancake batter. Pour the batter into the hot skillet and bake for 20-25 minutes. Turn the cornbread out onto a plate, crispy side up.

2 comments:

Becky said...

I'm so glad you shared your grandmother's recipe! I am copying and pasting it now. Hers will be the next one I bake.

You know, I still miss my grandmothers. My maternal grandmother, Mimi, crossed in 1988. My paternal grandmother, Mamah, crossed in 1993. I used to call them all the time to talk about recipes, how they made things, etc. Mimi was always sending me care packages and she never sent one that didn't have recipes that she had cut out of newspapers, magazines, etc and saved for me. I just hope that when it is time I will be half as good a grandmother as mine were.

Becky said...

And so why am I not in your list of your "girls"?

LOL