I have a question, but I first need to tell you why I am asking the question. I love cornbread! I believe cornbread is the perfect food and should be included all by itself in the list of recommended food groups. I'm pretty sure Worth will agree with me. He touts his cornbread as the perfect recipe for cornbread and he may well be right since our recipes are almost identical.

The reason I am asking the question is the fact that an artist feels a blank, empty canvas must be filled with life and color from his or her imagination. (I know I used the wrong pronouns, but I don't claim to be woke) For me, a mixing bowl full of perfect cornbread batter is the equivalent to an artists empty canvas and I always feel the need to fill it with color and life. In the past, I've filled it with crumbled bacon, shredded cheese; and many other things. I believe a slice of cornbread should qualify as "a full meal deal" with nothing else required, but always welcome. A bowl of beans or a bowl of chili simply cry out for a companion slice of cornbread.

Last night, my cast iron skillet preheated to 425 F was lovingly filled with cornbread batter painted with five jalapeno peppers, three large Candy Stripe sweet peppers, sweet corn off the cobb; and something else; but I don't remember what it was. My artistic endeavor turned out perfect. It is always wise to remember anything I say must be taken with a grain of salt (old euphemism or adage for folks younger than me).

My question is, if you like cornbread and consider yourself a culinary artist; what do you paint your cornbread with?

I had to edit this to add a fresh, large, red garden tomato to the list of additions to my cornbread. Everything was chopped small and pre cooked in the microwave so I could pour the water off.

Blueberries, only the native "low sweet" type. The large cultivated ones have too much, how do I put it...paint.

Tormato wrote: ↑Sun Jun 13, 2021 4:03 pm Blueberries, only the native "low sweet" type. The large cultivated ones have too much, how do I put it...paint.

Yep! I once added a can of those red ripe jalapeno's in the adobo sauce to a pan of cornbread. My mental stability still has not recovered from the sight of bright red cornbread. That may haunt me for the rest of my life. It tasted like and looked like a bad red velvet cake.

I recently bought a large electric grill so I could cook a lot of bacon, eggs, and fluffy pancakes pretty quickly. I like to put blueberries in my pancakes and I like the large, runny berries because they color the pancake around the berry purple without "painting" the entire pancake purple.

Fresh jalapeños red or green
Maybe corn from time to time.

My wife hated cornbread dressing.
I love it.
The dressing they had in Alaska i wouldn't feed to the dogs it was runny bread slop.
I just took boxes of instant cornbread dressing up on the plane with me.
Not great but way better than that springtime cow flop they made from obviously fresh bread.
It was about the consistency of thick ketchup.

I am not from the South but I discovered cornbread dressing many years ago and we love it too. Mine is not runny.

We toss whole fresh trimmed with husk on into pot,steamed with water maybe 8 minutes.Remove all the husks silk,stand up shave kernels off and put into your favorite mix.Big slab of butter(unsalted) on top.Pair with a good bowl of chili and beans,heaven for me.

We like thinly sliced okra in our cornbread.

worth1 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 13, 2021 9:18 pm My wife hated cornbread dressing.
I love it.
The dressing they had in Alaska i wouldn't feed to the dogs it was runny bread slop.
I just took boxes of instant cornbread dressing up on the plane with me.
Not great but way better than that springtime cow flop they made from obviously fresh bread.
It was about the consistency of thick ketchup.

Over the past few years, my extended family became less and less traditional in holiday celebration. It came to an end a couple of years ago when a very busy family member suggested we have hot dogs for thanksgiving. I am a very traditional person and I happen to love cornbread dressing with almost every meal from late November to New Years. I put my foot down and announced our holiday celebrations will be traditional turkey and ham and cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce and a few other things. I refuse to make it from the boxed mixes. They are pretty good, but they are not traditional enough for me. One of my favorite musicals was "Fiddler On The Roof". I sometime find myself singing "Tradition" very loudly.

friedgreen51 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:17 pm We like thinly sliced okra in our cornbread.

I would never have thought of that. I'm not sure if it repulses me or if it makes me hungry. I love okra and will have a lot this year. I may give it a try.

One of my favorite snacks in the evening when I was younger was a tall milk glass filled almost to the top with crumbled corn bread and filled to the top with ice cold milk. I sometimes dream about that, but my eating habits have changed. I also sometimes dream about going to 25 cent movies and buying a ten cent cup of doctor pepper soft drink with a nickle bag of spanish peanuts poured into the soft drink. I could watch an entire movie drinking doctor pepper and chewing peanuts at the same time.

It's been a while since I made cornbread—not for lack of wanting to, but I digress. I used to make it quite a bit before I came back to Idaho in 2011.

It's hard to recommend stuff without knowing what's in your canvas, but my canvas is similar to this (this is an earlier recipe; I probably refined it some later):
5 cups (about 2lbs) freshly finely ground popcorn
4 cups plain yogurt (full or low fat—not fat-free)
4 large eggs
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 tablespoons brown sugar
3 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
A few dashes of garlic salt (I'd probably use granulated garlic now, and maybe minced onions or onion powder, too)
A few dashes of Cayenne pepper (not enough to really notice, however)

Directions:
Stir all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Grease 12" cast-iron frying pan with a liberal amount of vegetable oil. Add the batter. Smooth it out. Bake at 400 degrees F. for maybe ~51 minutes. I actually preheated it really hot and then changed it down to 400 at baking time, but I doubt that's necessary.

Features:
* Gluten-free
* Wheat-free
* Substantial
* Not dry
* Not super crumbly
* Slices into clean wedges easily

Yogurt is really the key ingredient for the nice texture.

I haven't settled on favorite things to add, yet, but here are some things I might like to try, given I have several years more perspective (I haven't tried these, however; they could potentially be nasty, but I have hope they could be great):
* Olives (green or black)
* Sliced peppers (fresh or pickled)
* Celery
* Mushrooms (fresh, sliced or pre-sautéed, or canned)
* Ground beef (pre-scrambled)
* Ground turkey (pre-scrambled)
* Ham
* Frozen kohlrabi greens
* Frozen shredded cabbage (I don't think I've tried this, anyway; possibly)
* Zucchini
* Green beans
* Wonderberries (I have high hopes for this one.)
* Crunchy tomatoes (like Purple Bumblebee)
* Dehydrated tomatoes
* Shredded potatoes, carrots, or sunroots
* Shredded or chopped bottle gourds
* Frozen kale
* Frozen chard
* Frozen lettuce (I really like frozen lettuce cooked; it has a nice metallic flavor in stir fry)
* West India burr gherkins
* Frozen mustard greens
* Canned artichokes
* Canned bamboo shoots
* Onion greens (these might pair well with tomatoes if tomatoes work)
* Hominy
* Cheese
* Summer savory
* Dill seed
* Hotdogs (Well, if it's nasty, at least corndogs are good.)

Traditionally (back in the day), if I haven't added frozen corn, I've added various frozen vegetables not mentioned above to the batter, which vegetables weren't 100% recommendable when it came to flavor/smell, but were nutritious and made for better texture (e.g. broccoli or onions). Corn worked well, but there's already corn in cornbread; so, nutrition-wise, other vegetables might be better preferred. I would have experimented more, but after I moved, I had some obstructions to making cornbread regularly which made it inconvenient. I should make some soon, though; we have lots of yogurt.

Freezing some kinds of vegetables first makes it more moist, and makes the vegetables have a more desirable texture in the finished dish.

Okra sounds great.

I bet smoked oysters would be good.

worth1 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 5:44 pm I bet smoked oysters would be good.

I had a friend in extreme north Texas who would drive every fall to the Texas gulf coast for fresh oysters. He would return to his home and shuck the oysters and make Oyster dressing. He didn't smoke them and I don't know his recipe, but I would love to try a serving of his dressing. He was a fanatic about having his Oyster Dressing for the holidays.