Recent Discoveries

Some of our family will be coming to visit later this year. Because of that we have been making a list of things we would like for them to bring to us when they come. Things like pancake syrup, chili powder, reese's pieces, etc. I recently (yesterday and today) discovered that I can get two of the items on my list here. I may not be able to find them all the time or at every grocery store, but I know at least one place to look for them.

So what are those two things . . . black-eyed peas and cornmeal! I've been craving black-eyed peas, so I was incredibly surprised when I passed a bin at the grocery store with a random assortment of beans and saw black-eyed peas among them! And I recently learned from a friend that she uses cream of wheat (easily found here) as a substitute for cornmeal. We can get corn flour really easily, too, but the texture is just not the same. So yesterday when we were walking around this wholesale kind of place, I was delighted to find what appears to be cornmeal. I haven't cooked with it yet, so I'm anxious to find out what the texture is like in the finished product.

Now we can have a proper home-cooked southern meal of black-eyed peas and cornbread. (No, I'm not waiting until New Year's!) All that's missing is a little bit of ham!!