It's All About Mom...and Corn Fritters

How important is your family to you?

Sit anywhere close to me for five minutes, and I bet I will have mentioned my family or my cats at least once. I make no apologies for this.

It took me probably close to 20 years to realize that my mother was the best friend I always wanted throughout life. See, girls growing up, they have "friends" who stab them in the back and leave them in the cold for no reason at all. It happened to me more times that I care to admit when I was growing up. (Hell, it still happens, and I am 39 years old.) My mother would always be there to comfort me and have my back when needed...a fact I don't think I ever really appreciated until many years later.

Once I got over the whole sullen teenager "my parents suck" phase, I found out my mom was really one of the coolest women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. We share so many of the same passions and dreams. We are completely simpatico. This doesn't mean that we don't still have our share of fights...we are still mother and daughter, after all, and I can be quite the handful to deal with...but in the end I still know that she loves me deeply...and she knows that I feel the same.

Because of this woman, I developed a love of entertaining and cooking. She is just as frou-frou as any female on the face of the Earth...and I love it. She has a seemingly endless supply of things to make any number of dinner parties something that one will never forget. I am willing to bet that she could pull out party napkins to just about any occasion that pops up.

She has an impressive green thumb and can grow flowers from sticks. I know what the names of countless plants and flowers are by just being around her all my life. I think that impresses my husband a little bit, and honestly I am a bit impressed with myself at retaining all of this information considering I don't have any sort of desire to garden whatsoever. It's not that I don't like playing in dirt - alright...that's exactly what it is. Kneeling in dirt planting flowers, getting all hot and sweaty plus the knowledge that a bug is going to crawl on me is not my cup of tea.

My mother also taught me to serve others. By her example, I have learned how rewarding it can be to give my time in exchange for helping those who need it. From collecting canned goods for God's Storehouse, to helping build a shelter for a homeless man, to volunteering for Operation Christmas Child, to simply cooking a meal for a sick friend, she has spent her life looking for ways to make other people's better.



A lot of girls spend their youth vowing to never become their mothers...yet I can only hope to become the woman my mother is. I pray that I emulate her giving spirit and genuine love and concern for people. I hold out hope that one day my fiery temper I inherited from my father will be tempered with the propensity for being a peacemaker like she does. You won't get her to admit it, but she is a wonderful artist and has always painted beautifully. I wish I could do that.

My mother has also been a teacher for me in the ways of the kitchen. Through her and my father, I am actually not a bad cook. I learned how to can my own foods by years of watching them. I still can't fry chicken without burning it (sorry mom and dad), but I did master a few of her recipes thankfully.  It is never as special as eating your parents' cooking, but it is an acceptable second place if you learn how to make it exactly like they do.

That said, I really have to learn how to properly fry chicken. I can't call myself a southerner if I don't know how to do at least that. Sounds like I need a day in the kitchen with mom and dad where I learn from the masters.

The other day, I made sour cream cornbread from my grandmother's recipe. I had creamed corn leftover from the ingredients, and I promised to show you how to use them up by making my mother's delicious corn fritters.

Thank you for everything, mom. For your friendship, your guidance, your wisdom, your love, your patience, your honesty, your strength...everything...over the years. Thank you for loving me even when I was horrible to you. Thank you for never turning your back on me. To say that I love you just doesn't seem to cover what you mean to me, yet words are all I have to try and explain the depth of my emotions and gratitude towards you. So when I tell you that I love you, I hope you feel everything that those words encompass.

Grandma's Sour Cream Cornbread

When I think of my grandmother's cooking, I think of fried chicken, vegetable soup, homemade biscuits, butter beans, fried fatback, and this lemon meringue pie she used to make that only my brother liked. It's not that the pie itself was bad, but she didn't pre-bake the pie crust before making it, so you had this delicious filling and gorgeous meringue, but a raw and gummy pie crust. For someone (like me) with textural issues in food anyway, I just couldn't eat it. My brother was fine with that, and made sure to scarf pretty much the whole pie down himself. Not that it mattered because she always seemed to have chocolate ice cream in the freezer, and that made for a very happy Krista.

Something else my grandmother used to make that was out of this world, was her sour cream cornbread. This stuff is amazing. Somewhere, there is a handwritten recipe from her of this miracle cornbread. I think we framed it and gave it to my brother at some point in time. As for me, before I moved away from home, I took the time to hijack kindly ask for and copy each and every recipe that my mother made over the years that I fell in love with. I was huge into scrap-booking at the time, so I put them all into a book with pictures and anecdotes behind the beloved people who gave me the joy of eating these wonderful foods over the years. As I grow older, and some of these people leave us, this book grows more and more precious to me.

This weekend was game night at our house, and I felt like cooking.  On the menu was a chicken casserole (recipe to come later this week), tomato/basil/feta salad (yummy and brought by our friends!), strawberry poundcake with Tequila Rose glaze, and grandma's cornbread. There was also a fantastic ham ball with crackers, spinach dip, and my homemade peach salsa as appetizers. A lot of food, no? That's what gamers do: they snack while playing.  *wink*

So this five ingredient cornbread is actually pretty easy to make, and I am not kidding you when I tell you it's a show stopper. It uses creamed corn and sour cream, which gives it a moist, dense, cake-like texture - and honestly - taste. I could eat this for dessert, breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner...that is how yummy it is!

Grab a bowl, and empty the contents of a package of Jiffy corn muffin mix. Then add two eggs, one stick of melted butter, 8 ounces of sour cream, and 8.5 ounces of creamed corn. Basically it runs about 1 cup each of sour cream and corn, with the cup of corn being a heaping one. The debacle is that you will have leftover creamed corn...and unless you really like eating it the way that it is...what do you do with it? Hang onto it. Freeze it or something, just don't throw it away. I have a recipe for my mom's corn fritters that are out of this world, and they will use up those leftovers!

When you unwrap the stick of butter, don't throw the wrapper away just yet. Use it to grease your 8x8 dish so that the cornbread won't stick! It works perfectly, and doesn't get your hands messy.  (thank you Paula Deen for that gem of an idea!)

Mix everything together until well combined, and pour into your prepared baking dish. Bake in a preheated 425°F oven for 25-35 minutes, or until lightly golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.

Cut into squares, put on a serving platter, and stand back!  Well, after you get your share, of course. ;-)

Single Serve Frittata

Not so long ago, a friend of mine confided in me that he had trouble making an omelet. They should be easy, right? Not always. There have been plenty of occasions where I have gone for a nice omelet and ended up with scrambled eggs by way of completely and accidentally butchering my eggs.

The only foolproof method I have found for that is to make a frittata. Which, in reality, is just basically a fancy omelet when you come down to it. The bonus is that it is simple to make and requires no special chef skills of flipping it over.

This morning while surfing on Facebook, a friend of mine mentioned that he was in the mood for a big breakfast. Something about that really struck a chord with me, but it's been a week of little to no sleep and daily migraines for me, so a big, involved breakfast was not really something I was wanting to invest in. I have a small frying pan, about 6-8 inches or so, and immediately thought about making a "personal pan" frittata in it.

So I gathered my ingredients, and set out to work:

1. one small new potato
2. two eggs
3. 1/4 cup cheese
4. 2 tablespoons milk
5. 1/3 cup chopped ham
6. salt and pepper

As proof of being a true Southerner, I keep a small container of bacon grease in the fridge; something that I picked up from my parents. When I was a kid back in the 80's, they used to make popcorn on the stove, and the oil they used was - you got it - bacon grease. 

Best. Popcorn. EVER.

I don't even care how incredibly unhealthy that was...I would eat that popcorn again right now if they made it for me. Man that was some gooooooood stuff. My parents were hip to bacon flavored popcorn before it was even a thing. That is the proof that I officially have the coolest parents ever. Yup, yup.

But I digress.

A little smear of bacon grease into the pan, followed by finely chopped potato. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on them, and saute over medium heat for about 5-7 minutes so the potatoes are cooked through and even a little bacony-crunchy. (Bliss.) 

In a small bowl, crack your two eggs, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and then add your milk. It helps the eggs to be a little lighter and fluffier. Now take a fork and whip the heck out of that stuff. Once it is nice and combined, pour that into the pan over top of the potatoes. Don't stir. Remember, we aren't scrambling!

Now quickly add the ham and sprinkle the cheese over top. You can push the ham down with a spatula to make sure it's well incorporated into the eggs. Let this sit for a minute or two, or until the edges just start to cook. Once it gets to that point, take the frying pan and pop it into a 350  oven for 10 minutes. You can tell it's cooked when you shake the pan and the center doesn't jiggle like my second grade teacher's flabby biceps.

Remove pan from oven - be careful, don't do like I do sometimes and forget that handle is HOT! - and grab a plate. Your frittata should just slide right of of the pan. Sometimes you may have to wriggle a small spatula beneath it, but it shouldn't be hard to remove at all. I added a sliced Honeycrisp apple and two pieces of toast to my brunch. I am good until dinner!

Do you like to eat breakfast at any other time of day than morning? I sure do. I can eat it for any meal!