I love bright yellow cornbread

my very first cornbread...EVER. it was an exercise in connecting with my EasternKentuckySkaggs self, and ohso tasty! valentine's day, last saturday, i decided to "bring Cracker Barrel home" and cooked up a big southern food storm in our kitchen. for koudou, mama and me. i wanted a cornbread that was moist but crisp and crumbly all at once. i had a little baggie of Martha White brand yellow cornmeal mix (hot rize). I looked on the side at her "Tex-Mex Cornbread" recipe and decided I would base my batch on her inspiration...

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups hot rize cornmeal mix

1 15 oz. can creamed corn

1 cup milk (I used buttermilk)

4 T canola oil

1/2 t sugar

1/2 cup shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese

a pinch of salt and smoked spanish paprika

baked her at 425F in mama jo ann's well-greased 9-in. skillet, approximately 30 minutes or so until golden cracked on top. Cooled her down and enjoyed with mama's fried chicken, homesmashed buttermilk taters w/ mushroom brown gravy. fresh cabbage-carrot salad and my slow-cooked shell beans/field peas/yellow squash. damn, that was good!

Octopus Oktapodi Tintenfisch Krake

give me octopus anyday. aegean octopus. caught by baba yianni, lingering briefly in a plastic shopping bag with seawater, eventually tenderized with forty beatings on a nearby rock formation, rubbed, frothed and beaten again. grilled, boiled, stifado (stewed with onion). we children would sit on the beach, sand literally "everywhere," meaning in our ears, noseholes, on eyelashes, skin, bumcrevice, you name it... stickysaltysweaty sand. we played with the lingering octopi in the plastic seawater bags, watched them cling to us with hundreds of tentacle-hickies on our arms. i wonder now if they tasted the salt and sand on us, desperately attaching to what they believed was a step back into home... we screeched and giggled at their stickiness, watching baba prepare their finicky flesh for our meal out next to the water. i remember that was the summer i was wearing my all-time favorite (yes, to this day...) swimsuit, a bright blue onesie adidas, white strips up the sides, burned shoulders and slowly sunbleaching long hair, skinny little swissgreekamerican girl. i wasn't even interested in food at the time, but octopus and fresh figs somehow rest happy in my mind. climbing fig trees on thassos... but i digress, we'll leave the figs for another time,... and the fish that the sea caught for me in my lost and tossed fishing line wound around a little cork board...

ode to an octopus

sticky salty

long and clingy

regal in the sea

loving living under

between behind the rocks

frothy kissy hicky clingy

tender meaty lemon

olive vinegar oniony

m m m!

Dreaming of Oysters...Mussels, Clams

my baba and i share a love for fresh oysters. i'm thinking about clams, mussels, scallops. smoked oysters, too.

i've been surfing around for inspirations for flavor combinations and came upon a few with oysters and other shell critters this evening.

in november last year, i was visiting a dear friend. we ate at carrabba's, feeling like a meze night, so we ordered a variety of 'appetizers.' among them steamed mussels in a special, garlicky pernod basil sauce. it was a defining moment of culinary divinity, and i never trusted that such an experience might happen at a chain restaurant. a generous reminder that awe-inspiring food living is found everywhere, anywhere, any time! mussels, plump with their soft seafulness. swimming in a sauce that only commanded us to sponge her up with hot crusty bread that evening!

...i'm adding on...tuesday night, a farewell dinner with aunt sue before she heads back down to florida. she, mama and i had lusted after a creamy green-with-parsley clam linguine all the way home on our drive back from baltimore to visit grandma and family. so that's exactly what we did last night! mama and i first made and froze two dozen fat crabcakes (recipe off old bay seasoning tin and some flourish) and then made a creamy white sauce for the clam and chopped fragrant fresh parsley. linguine al dente. serve her up with extra fresh parsley and grated parmesan. belly pleaser, grazie!

clams, mussels, oysters, maryland blue crabs. thank you, salty mama natura!