i've been a bad, bad blogger.  we've had some great visitors the last couple weeks (some friends drove all the way from champaign, il to see us & my brother stopped by on his way to st. louis AND on the way back).  this afforded us the opportunity to have some food i want to write about but the time to actually write about it has been short.  i've also found that the only time i feel like writing is when i'm by myself but sometimes when i'm by myself i don't want to write.  so part of my excuse has been wonderful visitors but the other part is my own laziness. 

john started a new job & we've spent some quality time together before his new post-training schedule takes most of our free time together away.  we drove out to a nature area west of us with our dog, bella.  it was really pretty & made me wonder what it must have been like to be crossing the state in a covered wagon and seeing only tall grass prairie.  here's a cute picture of me & bella.



i've done a little cooking when i've had time too.  i had the food network on as i was doing something else the other day and the barefoot contessa came on.  that woman annoys the heck out of me but she made some grilled polenta with rosemary that sounded interesting and easy.  i happened to have some polenta that's been in my cabinet for a while that i hadn't yet been inspired to use.  i love rosemary so i thought i'd give the dish a try.

the box of polenta happened to have a recipe on the back specifically for the grilling or frying application so i used that & added dried rosemary (because i don't happened to have a beautiful rosemary bush in my expansive english garden style yard like the contessa does).  the recipe is basically making a standard polenta & adding plenty of rosemary leaves to it then putting it in a dish (i used a loaf pan) & letting it set in the fridge.  finally, you grill or fry it.

i love cornbread & all things cornbread-like so i thought i'd like polenta.  well, i was very wrong.  even after frying and adding salt & pepper, the polenta was still very bland.  i didn't take a picture of it & actually ended up throwing over half of it out.  if this is something that snooty, pretentious foodies who live in the hamptons & have nothing better to do than "fight" over if the husband can get a yacht consider a treat, then i'm perfectly happy being the complete opposite of that. 

i'm sure there are ways to prepare polenta that are good, otherwise why would anyone eat it?  but, this recipe frankly sucked.  i didn't like anything about it.  i did have a cornmeal based recipe last night that was awesome.  i was grocery shopping & in the "ethnic" food aisle i found a mix for chi-chi's sweet corn cake.  i've never eaten at chi-chi's but the picture on the package looked just like something i had at a local mexican restaurant (which they called masa cake) and i had to try it.  is was basically sweet cornbread with creamed corn in it... and it was excellent!  and now that i found this recipe (which has every ingredient that was in the ingredient list on the package with the proportions figured out for me!), i can make it myself without buying the mix. 

the only downside is that immediately after eating this (each of the 3 times i had a slice) i got heartburn/acid reflux.  unfortunate.  i'm starting a food diary due to some stomach issues i've been having (to figure out if i have ibs and/or what foods may be triggering the issues) so now i need to do some further testing to see if it was the creamed corn or the cornmeal that was the problem.  i REALLY hope it was the corn itself because i don't know if i could live without cornbread and hushpuppies in my life.

this post has become far longer than i'd intended!  i'm going to get back in the writing habit so visit again soon for more restaurants & recipes!

LOL! I cracked up. I tend to agree with you up to a point. You know those rolls of polenta in the grocery that you can slice and fry? They suck. But I worked for a restaurant years ago that made awesome fried polenta. I never got the recipe but I remember they had stirred green chilies, a bit of sugar, and sharp cheddar into the polenta before chilling it and cutting to fry. So really the cornmeal is just a carrier for the other flavors. Also, I grew up eating fried polenta (or cornmeal mush as it's called here) with butter and syrup. That's pretty good too. But I totally relate to the bland if you don't have a good recipe! Hang in there and try again. The corn cakes sounded GREAT.

Hey, I have friends that live in Champaign IL also. As a matter of fact, I'm heading there for a few days next week!

Bella is cute :)

Writing and blogging is not easy, take your time, soon you'll be back in stride.