Adventures in Babysitting: Cornbread

I'm babysitting. It officially started about five hours ago, and right now the kids are in bed. So things have started off well. (:

My sister and her husband have flown off looking for a place to live in their new city-of-residence-to-be. I flew out yesterday to stay with their four older kids (ages 6, 5, 3 and 2) for about two and half days. Today in their preparing to leave, my sister mentioned that she was going to try to make cornbread to go with our dinner for tonight. Turned out she didn't have time, so we were going to skip the cornbread. I started thinking that that sounded really good, so I pulled the recipe book out - and got stuck. The first ingredient was flour. She had told me where they kept their whole wheat flour, so I was good there. The second ingredient was corn meal. I searched the cupboards. I searched the freezer. I think I even looked in the refrigerator. What I did come across was this -

This was the closest thing I could find that looked like it might possibly be cornmeal. I sent this picture to Bethany and asked her opinion. After I had googled images and was convincing myself that it was cornmeal, she wrote back and said she didn't think it was, but I could get a second opinion. I texted Caitlin and Sara, my other older sister and a sister-in-law, this picture -

Caitlin called and said it didn't look like cornmeal to her either. While talking to her I was still looking for something, anything that could be cornmeal. Since Faith had mentioned making it, I was sure that meant that she had cornmeal in the house. I told Caitlin that the bag of mysterious stuff was on the same shelf as other grains, and we couldn't guess what else it might be, so we decided it was coarse cornmeal.

I got off the phone, and got to work.

I got stuck in the recipe again when I needed baking powder. Again I came up with a plastic bag - this time full of white stuff. I hoped it wasn't cocaine - or baking soda - and used that. I realized later as I was putting things back in the cupboard that I had pulled a huge container of baking powder out but that was back when I was looking for the cornmeal and hadn't really registered what it was. Obviously.

So I ended up with this -

I popped it in the oven and hoped for the best.

It came out looking like this -

I tried it and it wasn't too bad. It was a little bit bitter (I'm guessing I used baking soda - not cocaine), but not bad. Decent enough that I gave each kid a small piece of it while serving the main dish.

The 5 year-old was the first one brave enough to tell me that he didn't like 'that stuff.' I told him he didn't have to eat it. This was seconded by the 6 year-old (who, for the record, had already eaten his) and then thirded by the 3 year-old.

The 2 year-old asked for another piece.

And then another.

And another.

She liked it so much she even flavored her water with it.

And drank it.

Then she took it out and drank some more.

Guess which child is my favorite? (:



I have since heard from my sister during their layover that they did not, in fact, have cornmeal in the house.

Now I'm really curious as to what it was I managed to put together. Some kind of radically awesome new not-cornbread?

Probably not.

So Faithy, at your earliest convenience, please reassure me that I did not poison your children.


And let this be a lesson to everyone that all bags containing mysterious foods should be labeled. Because you never know when a babysitter is going to try to make cornbread...