Lessons in Baking: Cornbread (AND!) Cooking: Brunswick Stew

This wasn't a huge endeavor and and wasn't too special so I didn't think to document anything until it was about over. And it's just as well because I wasn't too impressed with either of them, but they were okay.

I LOVE soups and stews and I could eat them at any time of year, but I know they're better crowd pleasers in the fall and winter, and since the weather has finally turned I decided to get on it. I originally thought to wait to make it until next Monday or Tuesday since there's rain in the forecast, but it's Debbie and Sophie's birthdays so they probably want something more exciting than my experiments.

So I found a recipe for "Brunswick Stew" which, I had no idea what that was exactly, but seemed like a good enough stew to try. Apparently it's "a tomato-based stew generally involving local beans, vegetables, and originally small game meat such as squirrel or rabbit, though today often chicken." (Spoiler alert: I used chicken.) It was fine, but it didn't seem to have too much unique taste or seem much different than anything other than a generic stew. It did have a slight kick to it because I put in a little too much cayenne, but that was about it. I will said I learned that celery seeds as a spice exists and I loved what they added to the flavor and aroma at the very beginning when it was just onions and potatoes and spices. Likely going to incorporate that more often.

This was after the squirrel (I mean, chicken)
was added

I made cornbread to go with it, which was my first time doing that too. (And where I realized that I should have looked at the serving amounts before I made either of these because it was wayyyy too much for 3 1/2 people, even for a day or two with leftovers!)

The cornbread was fine, but like the stew, nothing very impressive or memorable, just fine. The recipe called for 3/4 cup of sugar and I'm absolutely appalled at how much sugar goes into everything, so I'm often cutting it back, although not too much because I'm nervous the recipe may need sugar for chemical reactions and not just taste, so I took this one down to just 1/2 cup instead, but I don't think that's what made this just whatever.

Cornbread prep

Finished product

Well, you win some you lose some. At least it was pretty easy and good to know I could probably recreate it in a pinch, and I learned about celery seeds.