Thanksgiving 2011 - The Year of the Cornbread

I've probably made cornbread at least 100 times in my life. Never once did it seem difficult. When Mrs. Leslie volunteered to make the cornbread that my sister needed to complete the dressing for Thanksgiving, I was more than willing to let her have the job. Mrs. Leslie, not being Southern, has little cornbread experience.

The first batch turned out fine, but there was a problem with the fact that it was made using white corn meal. In the South, yellow corn meal is often preferred. Add to this the fact that there was not enough of the white to make the two large pans that were needed, and off to the store we went.

The second two pans, which were made using the yellow corn meal, looked fine on the top, but after cutting into them, it was apparent that something was wrong. A doughy center, which was white instead of yellow, was all I needed to see to determine that she had now produced three huge pans of unusable cornbread.

To her defense, she used the recipe from the Irondale Cafe website (the cafe that Fried Green Tomatoes was centered around). What she did not realize was that the temperature they listed was for a convection oven. Seriously, who has a convection oven in their home?!?

At this point she had gone through massive amounts of ingredients, so I decided I would just make it myself. Mine turned out good enough, though a little on the dry side. Even I was not immune to the cornbread curse though, as I tried to transfer the bread to a cutting board on the stove, dropped it, and had it burst into a thousand pieces and crumbs (half of which fell into the stove eyes).

What should have cost around $3, and taken about 30 minutes, ended up costing around $10, and taking HOURS. Next year, we will not be doing battle with the cornbread gods. I will gladly allow Publix, or any other grocery store, to take over this task.

What did we ever do to you, cornbread? Riddle me that, would ya?