Member-only story
The Corn Bread Muffin Incident
Somebody was extra tired this morning
We were making out our grocery list. The way that works is that I prepare a list of everything I know we need, my wife adds to it, and I go fetch it. She sometimes questions my list, but today’s first question threw me.
“Do you need corn meal flour for the corn muffins?”
I hadn’t put that on the list and had made a dozen of those muffins just yesterday, so I assumed she thought we needed the flour. I cheerily answered “No, I still have plenty of corn meal.”
“No, I mean do you have to make them with corn meal?”
I did a mental double take and then blurted out my confusion.
“How would you make corn meal muffins without corn meal?”
She scowled. “I don’t know, but these don’t taste like corn muffins. Can you use something else?”
Oh, okay. I understood now. My muffins do not taste like corn bread or any corn muffin you may have eaten. That’s true, but it’s quite deliberate. I use very little sugar in my recipe and I also add crushed walnuts, a rather unexpected ingredient. There’s good reason for this. We only eat these muffins doused with Heinz vegetarian baked beans. The beans and their sauce are sweet enough alone, so the muffins don’t need to be sweet…
