OW VEGAN: Appotomax Court House Cornbread

Even in our global age, I'm pleased to see that regional variations on common dishes such as chili, side salad, pizza, and potato salad can still cause conversations to break out into fisticuffs. Although chili seems to have the greatest emotional hold of these, I have more personal experience with cornbread because I married a Damn Yankee. Bless his mother, but I think she raised him on Jiffy mix. He is quite insistent that cornbread... well... is cake, but that's not his word for it.

A little history: Back when the Indians were still very different from the settlers, the country's preference insofar as corn went was divided into three regions. The Mexicali area took to blue corn. Yankees liked yellow corn, and Southerners preferred white corn. I'm not sure about the West, but Northerners sweetened their cornbread with a variety of ingredients such as honey, molasses, and sugar. Southerners preferred to flavor cornbread with drippings, usually bacon, or lard. In addition, I believe, although this is just a woman's intuition, that Southerners used cornmeal and Northerners used cornflour.

It is generally accepted that the Appotomax Court House is the town in which the Civil War was ended. So I offer you, proud-to-be-born-American Southerners and d-- our blessed brethren of the North, Appotomax Court House Cornbread, which I believe to be a marriage of cultures.

DISCLAIMER: I've only been on Earth since sometime in the 20th century, and I made a B in 10th grade World History. History doesn't interest me much. Everything foregoing is entirely 100% made up. Hope you enjoyed it. Don't use any of this information on your history exam.  

• ~2t vegetable shortening (I tared my food scale on an empty 9" cake round and applied liberal shortening with the result of 11g, which is just shy of 2t.)

• 1c. yellow corn meal
• 1/4c whole wheat flour
• 4t sugar substitute (I used sucralose which you may recognize in the brand Splenda.)
• 1/2t salt

• 1/3c. boiling water

• 3/4c. milk substitute (The nutrition is calculated with almond milk.)
• 4t vegetable oil (20g)

Pre-heat your oven to 400F. Grease up your pan. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Pour in the boiling water. I don't know why this is important, but just exercise a little trust. Someone with a science background will explain it soon. In fact, just try to think of an explanation for a few minutes at this point. Do a little dance. Make a little love. Get down tonight! Ok, you've prolly done enough now.

Add the rest of the wet ingredients. Whisk. Pour into pan. Bake about thirty minutes. Cornbread is l-a-z-y.

Serving Size: 1/8 sized slice                                     8 servings per recipe
105cal | 4.4fat | 15.4carb | 1.8protein | 1.6fiber | 265sodium

This is good in a square black iron skillet. My mom ate cornbread cut into a rectangle, then sliced horizontally and covered in mayo. (See future Almond Mayo recipe from Alex.) I plan to make what I know of as "dressin'" from all but a few slices of this and send it to church with cranberry sauce next Sunday. It is actually necessary and desired that cornbread in that recipe be stale.

The cake stand I got from my Magical Loot Dropping Ortho-Lady who is moving.

  Here's a straight on photo of the artwork. Her grandmother was a painter, just like my grandparents painted (mother's side) ceramics and (father's side) woodwork, and Alex's family has a landscape and portait painter in the grandmotherly direction, although you might need to insert a grand or two.

Then here, you can see the inscription, "Painted by Leila C. Greer 7-21-1984 To Berta love Mother." In case a certain Dr. by the name of Lares is out there, "Yes, she put a period after 'Mother'".