Cheddar-Buttermilk Cornbread

It seems that the Little Girl has inherited my crazy sleeping habits. Every night, from about 10 p.m. until about 2 a.m. she is up, fidgeting and crying and generally just not happy. It takes a while to settle her down, and then eventually, she falls asleep. If I'm lucky, she'll sleep for a few hours, but sometimes she takes cat naps and is up after 20 or 30 minutes. The other night was one of those nights, she was not interested in sleeping at all. She was up, gurgling and cooing, followed by bouts of crying and fidgeting, followed by quiet moments of staring into space and then back to gurgling and cooing. All night.

I was at my wits end, struggling to stay awake while Ellie squirmed in my arms, cursing myself for agreeing to take the late night shift so that Tom can get sleep, desperate for a few zzzz's myself, (hmm, I need to rethink the late nights since I also have her during the day!). The next morning, it felt like every nerve ending in my body was shaking, no, not shaking but actually vibrating, because I was so over tired. While Ellie napped, I should have napped, but once it was daylight I suddenly couldn't sleep, and found myself with a strong urge to be in the kitchen baking something.

I had some things in the fridge that needed to get used up before they crossed over to the dark side, so I searched online for recipes featuring buttermilk and cheddar cheese. There was a cornbread recipe at Epicurious that caught my eye, the reviews weren't too bad and it called for the buttermilk and cheddar cheese I needed to use, so I thought... why not. I decided I would bake it in my cast-iron pan just because I LOVE baking things in the cast iron pan. I also had all the other ingredients on hand so not having to schlep myself and Ellie out to the store was also a bonus. Don't you just love when you have all the ingredients you need for a recipe and don't have to go out?

Don't you just hate when the recipe doesn't turn out the way you expected it to? Sadly, this delicious looking cornbread wasn't so delicious tasting. It turned out rubbery and flavorless; I could barely detect any flavor from the buttermilk or the cheddar at all, (the bland cheddar was not the recipes fault of coarse, I had used a mild cheddar and that didn't help). Having read the complaints of blandness from the folks who reviewed the recipe, I doctored it up adding some extra touches while I was making it. A little extra cheddar, a few healthy shots of Tabasco®, and a teaspoon of chopped jalapeño. I also added extra buttermilk for moistness and a bit more sugar because I do like my cornbread on the sweeter side. I guess I was too conservative with the sugar, Tabasco®, and jalapeño, the only thing the extra cheese added was saltiness but no flavor. I was pretty disappointed but couldn't bring myself to just toss the bread. I may have mentioned before that it really bothers me to throw food away and since the cornbread wasn't entirely inedible, I decided I'd make a soup to eat the bread with. I made a curried lentil soup from a recipe that also came from the Epicurious site, adding my own touches with chunks of kielbasa to make it a bit more hearty. That was the perfect thing, the soup was so flavorful in comparison to the bland cornbread that my bitterness over the bread turning out mediocre was slightly lifted. The soup was so good I took a picture and may write about it in the future, I can't now though, because I pulled a muscle in my arm today and it hurts. I might have to cut it off. ACK! just kidding

Written by Deb on February 26, 2004 12:01 AM