A Cornbread Cinderella Story

Cornbread Stuffing

Remember that spicy cornbread a few posts back? Well, one of my curses in the kitchen is making too much food for a couple. My first years of cooking was for a family of four and taking my amounts down a notch is simply not in my programming. For the spicy cornbread, of course, I made too much and had more than 3/4 of the loaf leftover.

That household of four I cooked for comprised of three kids and one single mom. Times were often very lean, so lean in fact that when we were very young our family's food was provided by our local church. We didn't own a car during that moment in time so after we rode our two bicycles to church services on Sundays then back home, we would dress down, get back on the bikes and head to the rectory for a few bags of staple items. The weekly donation was a ham, white rice, powered milk, peas, pancake mix, peanut butter, honey, and wheat bread. Food became so precious to us after our mother pulled us up and out that we never wasted a morsel of whatever was in the kitchen. Taking that history lesson into account, I now look at leftovers as an exciting way to try new recipes and flavors.

Anybody knows the best thing to do with old bread is make a new stuffing, and with Thanksgiving around the corner this recipe could come in handy for the holiday or after! Originally, I found an Apple Pecan cornbread stuffing from allrecipes.com and it fit all my ingredient needs except I needed to make it my own. The recipe follows:

• 9x7 loaf of cornbread - or what's left of it :)
• 8 dry oz. of herb-seasoned stuffing
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 tblsp. chopped parsley
• 1 1/2 cup chopped bartlett pear
• 3/4 cup peeled and chopped carrots
• 1/2 chopped large Spanish onion
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 2 cups apple juice
• 3 beaten eggs
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. fresh ginger
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• salt & pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees & butter a 3qt. or 9x13 casserole dish.
• Chop all veggies, fruit, parsley, and pecans.
• Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat. Add chopped onions and celery. Salt & pepper to taste.
• Sautee 10 minutes and take off heat.
• In a large bowl add crumbled cornbread, stuffing, parsley, salt, and fresh ginger. Use ground ginger if fresh ginger isn't in the cupboard.
• Mix in onion, celery, and butter mixture then pears, carrots, pecans, beaten eggs, and apple juice. Combine via stirring until thoroughly mixed.
• Transfer to greased casserole dish.
• Bake for 35 minutes and serve.

Ciao! Mangia!