I have a long history of not following directions very well when it comes to cooking. Obviously. Luckily this has very rarely been to my detriment; I believe that what makes food good is leaving room for interpretation. I taste as I go and I tweak to my liking or to the liking of those I'm serving. I feel that recipes are outlines that point you in the right direction, not the gospel of food. Unless it's baking, that's science. Maybe adding a little almond extract here or substituting dark chocolate for milk chocolate there, but never any big, grand gestures.
The one exception to this rule that I've found so far is cornbread. In a pinch, I've been known to doctor up canned or frozen elements to create some quick and tasty potluck items on a shoestring budget and last minute notice.
This epiphany dawned upon me when I was invited to an annual event a couple years ago:
That's right. An event called Pork-A-Palooza. A 24 hour festival of pig, Pabst, potluck and people I've never met. I fear feeding people I've never met so I knew I had to come up with something tasty, barbecue compatible and cheap since I actually had to borrow the gas money from my mom to get to the get-together.
A trip to my local Grocery Outlet yielded 6 bags of generic cornbread mix for $1.00. This is not even on par with Jiffy; it's essentially bags of cornmeal mixed with dry milk. Now is a good time to mention I had never before made cornbread. Correction: I'd never made cornbread before that wasn't Jiffy. Jiffy was my base line.
The instructions were very similar to Jiffy; add this and that, bake for this long, yadda yadda. When I dumped the packet into the bowl I stared at the paltry dust of meal and milk and had an overwhelming Richard Dreyfuss moment... We're gonna need a bigger boat.
On hand I had some frozen corn, some awesome Snoqualmie Valley Honey of the Thistle variety (my favorite; the bees didn't make it last summer, damn this global warming), brown sugar and a dream. I mixed them all up with the mix and some evaporated milk and a metric butt-ton of butter. It turned out like this:
Awesomeness. Sweet, tender, studded with tiny bursts of corniness, nice crisp top and bottom and cute little swirlies that I made with a bamboo skewer. This was my test batch and it turned out better than I could have hoped! I made two half hotel pans, one with corn kernels and one without. Because I ran out of corn and couldn't afford more. We're in a recession, you know.
I had some Van de Camps Pork & Beans as well ($0.10 a can, righteous) that I doctored with some brown sugar, honey, Dijon mustard, Frank's RedHot and bacon ends and pieces bought for insanely cheap from Stewart's Meats in McKenna; a beautiful example of local meat marquetry founded in the depression era by Emmet Stewart. Worth the drive, stock up your freezer.
Both cheap-as-free dishes paired very well with the main course:
At the end of it all both dishes were well received. Around midnight there were drunken men, young and old, sitting around a kitchen table sopping up bean sauce with cornbread crust and muttering about "fatback" and obsessing over drips and crumbs. So much for hangover leftovers.
Lesson learned: Never be afraid of a small budget, a large crowd or an opportunity to express yourself creatively in a medium of discount groceries.
The one exception to this rule that I've found so far is cornbread. In a pinch, I've been known to doctor up canned or frozen elements to create some quick and tasty potluck items on a shoestring budget and last minute notice.
This epiphany dawned upon me when I was invited to an annual event a couple years ago:
That's right. An event called Pork-A-Palooza. A 24 hour festival of pig, Pabst, potluck and people I've never met. I fear feeding people I've never met so I knew I had to come up with something tasty, barbecue compatible and cheap since I actually had to borrow the gas money from my mom to get to the get-together.
A trip to my local Grocery Outlet yielded 6 bags of generic cornbread mix for $1.00. This is not even on par with Jiffy; it's essentially bags of cornmeal mixed with dry milk. Now is a good time to mention I had never before made cornbread. Correction: I'd never made cornbread before that wasn't Jiffy. Jiffy was my base line.
The instructions were very similar to Jiffy; add this and that, bake for this long, yadda yadda. When I dumped the packet into the bowl I stared at the paltry dust of meal and milk and had an overwhelming Richard Dreyfuss moment... We're gonna need a bigger boat.
On hand I had some frozen corn, some awesome Snoqualmie Valley Honey of the Thistle variety (my favorite; the bees didn't make it last summer, damn this global warming), brown sugar and a dream. I mixed them all up with the mix and some evaporated milk and a metric butt-ton of butter. It turned out like this:
Awesomeness. Sweet, tender, studded with tiny bursts of corniness, nice crisp top and bottom and cute little swirlies that I made with a bamboo skewer. This was my test batch and it turned out better than I could have hoped! I made two half hotel pans, one with corn kernels and one without. Because I ran out of corn and couldn't afford more. We're in a recession, you know.
I had some Van de Camps Pork & Beans as well ($0.10 a can, righteous) that I doctored with some brown sugar, honey, Dijon mustard, Frank's RedHot and bacon ends and pieces bought for insanely cheap from Stewart's Meats in McKenna; a beautiful example of local meat marquetry founded in the depression era by Emmet Stewart. Worth the drive, stock up your freezer.
Both cheap-as-free dishes paired very well with the main course:
At the end of it all both dishes were well received. Around midnight there were drunken men, young and old, sitting around a kitchen table sopping up bean sauce with cornbread crust and muttering about "fatback" and obsessing over drips and crumbs. So much for hangover leftovers.
Lesson learned: Never be afraid of a small budget, a large crowd or an opportunity to express yourself creatively in a medium of discount groceries.
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