From the Kitchen of Marge Ramirez
Choreos
(not to be confused with the breakfast item)
If a churro and an Oreo had a baby, this would be it. Golden cookies make it a bit more churro-y. Chocolate cookies have chocolate. Don’t be shy on the cinnamon and sugar at the end, and if you want to serve these up with a big glass of cold milk, we won’t judge you a speck. Sprinkle some cinnamon on it to make it fancy
Batter
1 cup of your favorite pancake mix (I like to make up a batch of my homemade mix and save the extras for breakfast)
2/3 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1 ½ teaspoons vegetable oil
Golden or chocolate sandwich cookies of your choice
Equal parts cinnamon and sugar mixed together
• Combine the pancake mix, oil, beaten egg, and milk in a mixing bowl until it creates a batter
• Plop a cookie down in there and use a fork to flip it around a bit until it is totally covered
• Lift the cookie up with the fork and wiggle it a little to get the excess off
• Fry in 350-degree oil for about 3 minutes or until golden
• Drain on brown paper bags or paper towels
• While still hot and a little oily, toss around in the cinnamon and sugar
From the Kitchen of Marge Ramirez Bubba Ray
Chili in a Cornbread Bowl
Now I know that most people think that Marge does all of the recipe making around here, but the truth is she might have given me some of the foundation for some of the dishes, but the menu is all mine. This here chili in a cornbread bowl is my greatest accomplishment if I do say so myself. Some people don’t believe that. Some people believe that it’s my Country Quesadilla and Warm Creamy Salsa that’s my real claim to fame, saying it’s just a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. Can you believe that? Grilled cheese sandwich. Now I ask you. What is a sandwich? I mean, what makes a sandwich a sandwich? Two pieces of bread. TWO pieces of bread. You take one piece of bread, you slap some cheese down on that booger (I was going to say ‘bitch’ but I have been informed that that is no longer an acceptable term and you being a girl and all, I wouldn’t want to offend you), then you put on another piece of bread, griddle it up, and you’ve got yourself a grilled cheese sandwich. That is not what I make. I use just the one piece of bread.
I’d like to add that I make that bread every day single-handedly. Well, I mean with my two hands. I’m not like Sally in the kitchen there who has just the one hand. She can’t really knead bread. That just gets messy. So, I get in there every day and I make big old pieces of flat bread. I put the cheeses and the onions and my secret blend of spices in there, I fold it on up, squish it down real good, and cook it. Now I ask you, does that sound like a sandwich? I rest my case. But anyway, back to the chili and cornbread bowl.
The thing about it is, I didn’t even plan it. Now, don’t you go telling anybody that I told you that. I have a certain standing around here and I don’t want my brilliance to dim in the minds of my admirers. So, we’ll just let them keep on thinking that I came up with this idea out of the clear blue sky and not because I didn’t have any bowls to have my chili in.
I used to eat my chili in a normal bowl just like anyone else. Every time that Marge cooked up a pot, I’d ladle it into a big old bowl, crumble up some cornbread on top, and go to town. One Christmas party, though, changed that forever. We had gathered up just about the whole town and were deeply involved in our festive celebration of the birth of our Lord and somebody broke out Cletus’s Clementine Moonshine. Well, after drinking a bit too much of it, which is to say…any, there were some words and a challenge and next thing I knew all my bowls ended up on the roof. They looked glorious all wrapped up with the Christmas lights. In fact, they’re still there. People come from all three surrounding counties to see my Christmas bowls. I tell you what, I like the attention. But they’re still my bowls. I realized quickly that going about my life without bowls was going to be bit more challenging. Not having a bowl for my morning cereal wasn’t all that difficult. I mean, I can just tip my head back and pour the cereal and milk in my mouth, then jiggle around some and it’s all the same.
But then Marge made up some New Year’s chili and I didn’t have a bowl to eat out of. I couldn’t climb up on the roof to get one of those bowls. There had been some ice and I just couldn’t get a good grip on it. Besides, there were still some people coming by to see the lights and I didn’t want to break up the display any. It was just too beautiful. So, I had to figure out another way to eat my chili. That’s when I thought about my cornbread. I always put the cornbread in the chili. So why not put the chili…in the cornbread. Believe me when I tell you that I don’t make none of that pansy cornbread that falls apart when you look at it wrong and tastes all sweet and sh—tuff. (Sorry. That’s another one of those words that I’m apparently not allowed to use anymore. I’m telling you. I feel like I’m having to learn to talk again. Times have changed. Times—have—changed.) My cornbread is solid. I don’t know if the jalapenos I mix up in there have some sort of binding powers or what, but when you turn a batch of my cornbread out on a plate, it stays together.
Therein lies the beginning of my brilliance. (That’s a new word I just learned. Therein. It’s just like ‘there’ but fancier. It sounds like it should be a guy on that show with the swords and the big mountains and the naked girls and the dragons and stuff. You know the one. What’s it called? I’m not allowed to watch it with Marge in the room, but I’ve caught a couple of episodes down at the bar on their screening nights when Vint drags out the big TV) I baked up some cornbread and plopped it out onto the cutting board. Just like always, it was just one big nice solid chunk. I had burned up the edges a little, but that’s no thing. I just took out the cheese grater and trimmed them up a bit. Then I hollowed out that middle and ladled in the chili.
BOOM. My masterpiece is born. Now if you really want to, you can put the innards on top of the chili, but I think a whole bowl made out of cornbread is enough and I’d just as soon put those aside and use them for corn pudding or dressing.
Well it looks like I’ve filled up both sides of this here recipe card and didn’t put the recipe. I’ll try to squeeze it here in the bottom.
1 pot chili
1 dish cornbread
• Hollow out your cornbread
• Put a big old ladle of chili inside
• Eat
Rue
I turned the page of the scrapbook and found the torn piece of notebook paper that Cletus had given me with his recipe for Cletus’s Clementine Moonshine scrawled on it. Now all that was visible on it was the title. The rest of the recipe had been crossed out with a large black marker until it was one solid mass of black ink. I felt Richard come up behind me and lean around to kiss my cheek and I pointed at the blotted-out recipe.
“I don’t think that was entirely necessary,” I said.
“Oh, really?” Richard said, grabbing the sides of my chair and spinning me around to face him. “You think that it’s a good idea to include a recipe for the very moonshine that led to her birth in our daughter’s scrapbook? A scrapbook, I’ll point out, that you intend on giving to her when she’s eighteen – right around when moonshine is probably the least good idea possible?”
“What?” I asked, trying to keep my face as straight as possible. “Don’t you want her to grow up knowing how to properly clean and disinfect?”
Richard laughed and leaned down to kiss me.
“Come on. It’s time to get going. We don’t want to be late.”
“Late?” I asked. “How can we possibly be late to pick apples? Don’t you ever slow down?”
He gave me a knowing look and grinned.
“Alright. Move slowly. Take as long as you want to get dressed. Put your makeup on. Get Clementine dressed. Stop for a meal and a couple of cups of coffee,” he teased. “But don’t blame me if all of the good apples on the bottom branches are already taken and the only ones worth eating are left up at the top.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind,” I said, standing up and starting out of my craft room and toward the stairs to our bedroom.
“You wouldn’t?” he asked, sounding both confused and a little bit aggravated that I seemed to have called his bluff and really was going to take the rest of the day to get ready to head for the orchard.
“Nope,” I said. I paused and glanced over my shoulder. “Because I would just make you climb up into the trees and get them for me.”
He gave me a playful glare and started toward me. I squealed and ran, scrambling up the stairs and toward our bedroom, hoping that we could steal a few minutes alone while Clementine finished up her mid-morning nap.