BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Damn… Today “snuck” up on me. Seriously… O_o

So, I am so busy that I’m meeting myself coming and going. Just finished prepping elebenty-twelb-bazillion mini tea sammiches for the o-spring’s Tea Party Project with her Gifted Class today. (NO, not THAT kind of tea party, the REAL kind with tea, snacks, and etiquette. You know, the kind you can actually take seriously and not just shake your head…) Anywho, I have tons more stuff to do – and that’s just BEFORE I deliver the sammiches…

So… Here’s a quickie blog. Since everyone is always asking me for recipes whenever I mention foodstuffs, here’s my personal recipe for Cheese Stuffed Cornbread – just like we had last night with the Black Eyed Peas and Smoked Turkey:

Merp’s Cheese Stuffed Cornbread

Wet Ingredients

• 1/2 Cup Plain Yogurt
• 1.25 Cups Milk
• 1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1 TBSP Jalapeño Juice (from jar of sliced Jalapeños)

Dry Ingredients

• 1 Cup Flour (AP)
• 1 Cup Yellow Cornmeal
• 1 TBSP Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1/4 Cup Sugar (Optional)

Other

• Bacon Grease or Lard
• 1 Cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese (Sharp or Mild, your choice)
• Cast Iron Skillet – 10″
• Butter

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease Skillet with Bacon Grease/Lard, set aside.

Beat eggs, then mix together with the rest of the wet ingredients until fully incorporated and smooth. Will be somewhat thick.

Sift together all dry ingredients in a large bowl, make a “well” in the center, and pour in pre-mixed wet ingredients. Stir with a rubber/silicone spatula, using a folding motion, until fully incorporated. Mixture should be wet but lumpy, do NOT overmix.

Pour 1/3 of mixture into skillet and smooth to edges with spatula. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. Pour remaining 2/3 of mixture on top of cheese and carefully spread out.

Place in 400 degree oven and bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Approximately 30 minutes.

Poke several holes in top with toothpick or fork. Apply butter to top, return to oven for 2-3 minutes.

Serve with Beans, Greens, Soups, or just about anything where cornbread is desired.

Optional: Add crumbled bacon, or minced Jalapeños to the mix.

More to come…

Murv

Allow me to quell your fears. This blog entry isn’t about what your dirty little minds think it’s about.  So there.

 Now, on with the story…

It was a weekend just like any other weekend, with the exception perhaps that it was Fourth of July weekend. However, since July 4th has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on this tale, we’ll stick with, “It was a weekend just like any other weekend.” All good? Terrific…

On this particular weekend like any other weekend I had been doing elebenty-gazillion loads of laundry just like any other weekend. However, I was finished with laundry, so I don’t guess it has any real bearing either, other than the fact that I had “specially washed” one of the O-springs garments sans fabric softener because she was on a mission to dye it a different color. Of course, what with the spring being a little to the young side for handling stuff like dye and hot water without dying the whole room, adult supervision was needed.

For the record, E K has me doing the laundry, but I don’t dye. Allowing me to dye something would be tantamount to allowing the o-spring to dye something without supervision.

Anywho… On this particular weekend we had also purchased a new computer for E K. Super fast, loaded with memory, storage, and all housed in a black case to match her shoes and leather wear. E K likes to coordinate, you see. Therefore, we were in the office. I was busily doing whatever it is that writers do when they are working on 57 projects at once. E K was playing Speed Sudoku… Or HALO 17: The Leather-Clad Bitch Edition… Or  hacking NORAD… Or maybe it was paying bills and checking her Facebook profile. I never can keep any of that straight. Either way, we were engaged in office type computer activities, and the spring was watching the toob — that is, right up until her program ended and she had a sudden, powerful desire to dye the aforementioned garment.

No… She didn’t try to do it herself. That would be way too predictable… Come on… You know me better than that…

Acquiescing to the Tween Urgency of the project, E K sent the child on a mission. That being to go into the basement and retrieve the large bucket we use for whatever sorts of things one might require a large bucket. And so, off the o-spring went to “haz a bukkit.”

Two minutes, seventeen seconds elapsed when we suddenly heard a door fly open, followed by a running child – the herd of elephants noise was then followed up by a herd of wildebeests bounding up the stairs toward the office. The louvered doors split, swinging inward with enough force to cause a sonic boom. The silence in the wake of the sound barrier being broken was quickly filled with a panting child.

Gasping for breath she yipped, “OhMyGoshIt’sHUGE!!”

I remained silent. I knew better than to get involved.

“The bucket?” E K asked.

“Nothuhbuuug!” Child-o-mine replied.

E K puzzled aloud, “The what?”

Our tween panted some more, then gulped in some air and yelped, “There’sAGiantBugDownThere!”

E K found this to be funny. So did I. But that’s not the funny part I’m here to tell you about.

So… E K says to the spring, “How big is this bug?”

“OMGIT’SHUGE!” the kid replies.

“Really?” E K says.

“YES!” the wild-eyed child tells her.

“It’s been raining,” the redhead explained. “It’s probably just a water bug.”

You see, our basement is an unfinished, leaky, storage/laundry hole in the ground. Whenever it rains, we get water, and maybe even some water bugs.

Now, as we know, for E K this isn’t a really huge issue. If it’s a bug she likes, she picks it up and moves it to a safe, out-of-the way, natural habitat sort of location, and then threatens anyone in the general vicinity with death if they even look like they might be intent on harming the insect. However, if it is a bug she doesn’t like it still really isn’t a problem – and she does, in fact, have a list of bugs she doesn’t like. It’s a short one, but it’s a list nonetheless.  Either way, in the event of the bug being on her hit list, she just puts on her patent leather cockroach killers and goes to work with a wicked gleam in her eyes and a smile on her lips. It’s pretty much the same as how she deals with men, except that as a rule, when it comes to men instead of insects, I’ve never seen her set one free, move him to safety, nor protect him from harm. Quite the opposite, actually… But I digress. This is about actual insects, not figurative ones.

The o-spring, however, hates ALL bugs. She fears ALL bugs. She would be perfectly happy for ALL bugs to be eradicated from the face of the planet. Hence the fact that she was now standing in the office hyperventilating.

But back to the dialogue…

“IT’SHuuuuuuuuuggggggeeeee!” the child repeated, not really placated by EKay’s explanation for its presence in the basement.

“Did you see it on the floor or on the stairs?” EKay asked.

“Onthefloor!” the short person replied.

The redhead shrugged and said, “Okay, well the bucket is on the shelf right at the bottom of the stairs.”

O-spring returned, “IknowIWasDownThere!”

“Well… Did you get the bucket?” E K asked.

The child thought for a second, then with the first inkling of calm she had shown since hurtling up the stairs, she delivered the punch line: “Wellllll… I SAW the bucket…”

Fifteen minutes later we held a funeral for the water bug. After we scraped him off the sole of EKay’s pump, of course. What with him being a water bug and all we flushed him. Seemed fitting.

After all that you have to wonder if he “Saw The Bucket” too… I’m thinking he probably did. Right before he kicked it.

More to come…

Murv