Well, It's Still Corn

"Honey," James called sweetly from downstairs. "Can we have dinner early tonight?'

I know that means he didn't eat lunch and couldn't see his way through the fridge to find a snack. I hadn't given one thought to dinner yet. "Of course," I said and then scrambled to come up with an idea.

Hmmm two birds with one stone? Two meals with one dish? Maybe I could get ahead on the holiday. I'm bringing the stuffing (although I guess it's not really stuffing since it's coming without the bird) to our event tomorrow. For me, stuffing calls for cornbread and so I made a double batch to have some for tomorrow and some for James' dinner tonight (maybe even some for breakfast) -- win, win, as they say. I still had a few links of that delicious Basque Sausage in the fridge and a bunch of broccolini so I sautéed the sausage (out of the casing) in a splash of olive oil and tossed in a good bit of chopped garlic and some leftover white beans I had cooked earlier in the week (bean and greens soup I think it was), just as the cornbread was coming out of the oven I stirred in some lightly blanched broccoli and gave it all a good turn before nestling it on the plate next to a good sized hunk of cornbread.

Normally I would serve a sauté like this with polenta, but this airy cornbread (4 Tb butter melted in a baking dish in the oven -- 1 1/2 cups corn meal, 1/2 cup flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, blended, mix in 1 1/4 cup milk and 1 egg whisked together -- mix wet ingredients into dry and pour into baking pan over the melted butter -- bake 30 minutes at 375º) had the right flavor, stood up to the zesty mix, and made tomorrow (and tonight) a little easier.

"You can make this for me any time," James declared between bites. Win. Win. Win.