I came home the other night and realized yet again that I had hit the jackpot.
Kindra was there, which is the ultimate jackpot, but: she had cooked cornbread and butter beans.
I pause here to say that this particular batch of cornbread was the best I have ever eaten.
And that coming fromsomeone whose mother made cornbread for almost every meal I ate until I was 18.
Mom and Grandma Blansett were the cornbread co-champions of the world, but neither of them ever made any this good.
The secret to this batch? After bribery and threats to tickle her feet, Kindra admitted that she had put in more salt than she intended and she used an entire glob of melted butter in the batter.
She had made it in a cast-iron (cast-arn, if you are from Fitzhugh) skillet abut 10 inches across.
I ate half the batch with the butter beans, saved a piece for breakfast and brought the two remaining slices for dinner at work the next day.
There are some people who have never eaten cornbread for breakfast and, if you are one of those unfortunate souls, you should try it.
My mother fried her cornbread, so the finished product was round, like a pizza. And she cut it like a pizza, so that the pieces were pie-shaped.
The way I eat leftover cornbread is: Slice your piece in half horizontally and flip it open so you have a top part and a bottom part.
Add whatever you want to the middle and flip the top back over to make a cornbread sandwich.
Molasses is exceptional on cornbread, as is blackberry or wild plum jelly.
My cousin, Bud Blansett, and I once had a lengthy discussion on cornbread and he is of the school that believes breakfast cornbread should be crumbled into a glass, doused with milk and eaten with a spoon.
That’s how my dad ate it - and it is good that way - but I no longer like the taste of milk. So it’s jelly or molasses for me.
The butter beans rocked, as well. They were dried, but Kindra cooked them in the pressure cooker, which makes dried beans or blackeyed peas taste almost like fresh-picked.
I added more salt than my cardiologist needs to know about and they were good to go.
It was a meal fit for royalty. I ate more than I should have and had to stretch out for a while as an aid to digestion.
I have never met a bean or pea that I didn’t like, and butter beans are atop the list. Right there with pintos and purplehulls.
I used to wonder if the manna that fed the Children of Israel during their 40 years of wandering was actually cornbread and beans.
I’m pretty sure I could live on them that long, especially if Kindra made them.