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Christi Diggs
on May 23 2013 - 06:00 AM
A drop of spin, a cup of deception and tsp. politics=Apathy
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I made some corn bread for Christmas Eve dinner and nobody ate it. Only two pieces were cut from the dish, and they were left uneaten on plates only to be tossed into the garbage.
The bread was whipped up from one of those mixes that come in a bag that we received as a gift.“From Wisconsin,” it said on the package. “Organic. Whole Grain.” And it tasted about as dry and organic as a ground up Wisconsin barn door.
I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, so I wrapped the remainder in foil and decided to save it for the birds.
But then I remembered a clever baking trick I learned from a bunch of Mother Teresa’s nuns who I worked with long ago at a soup kitchen in Gallup, NM. It was a lesson in recycling, renewal, and revival – a lesson in breathing life back into things destined for the dump.
These nuns would drive all over town to pick up leftovers from supermarkets and restaurants – day old bread, “aged” fruit, and any other edible discards they could salvage to feed the hungry.
On this particular day they had a huge box of very ripe, bruised bananas and loads of semi-stale sweet rolls and cinnamon buns and croissants and a bunch of other bready things.
On the floor in front of us they placed the biggest mixing bowl I had ever seen – big enough for me to sit in (but I didn’t). They had us peel all of the mushy bananas and drop them into the bowl. Then they dumped in all of the dried-up sweet breads and rolls and poured in a few gallons of milk. Nothing was measured or weighed. They were winging it. And my guess is that these women had spent years winging a lot of things. I suppose that’s part of what made them so awesome.
One of the nuns handed me a potato masher and four of us mashed up the concoction in the bowl until it was a velvety batter. Then they poured it into about 20 greased bread pans and started sliding them into their cavernous ovens. The result was delicious, moist banana bread that they served to their guests that evening.
It was like a modern day loaves and fishes story. Turning scraps into a feast.
So, taking a page from the sister’s wing-and-a-prayer cookbook, I crumbled up the dry cornbread into a mixing bowl. I added some almond milk, a little water, a few spoons full of applesauce, and several shakes of cinnamon, mixed it up and poured it into a couple of baking dishes.
I ended up with more than the original batch and it was not only moist, but really tasty.
As we barrel towards the end of 2012, and as resolutions for change start getting tossed around, I’m inspired by this little baking lesson.
I don’t necessarily need to throw out all of the dried and crumbling stuff in my life that isn’t serving me well. Maybe I just need to add a little of this and some of that – like a pinch of patience or a dash of a different perspective – and remix it. Or maybe I can put some of it on the back burner to simmer. Or maybe I’ll mash it all up with something sweet and bake it at 350 and see what comes out.
I prefer to avoid resolutions, so I’ll just do my best to follow fewer recipes and wing it more often.
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