Thanksgiving Incidentals

Supper before Thanksgiving. I was feeling peaky. So comfort food reminiscent of Sunday nights at home before the dreaded school week commenced was needed. Two lightly boiled organic eggs, brown toast with butter and Marmite.

And I had been thinking of mulled wine for days, so turned some Hogue Merlot 2004 into a warm drink: 2 tablespoons honey, some cloves, a bayleaf and a strip of grapefruit peel. Cinnamon and orange would be a good addition.

We used to have this in the winter in Bloemfontein, after long cold walks with the corgi of the moment in the bright, dry air. Down Paul Roux Street, around past Bayswater, beneath the president's residence, up, and down Harry Smith Street. Me in a striped poncho my mom had knitted for me, she sometimes in the muskrat coat. It gets cold there. Mulled wine in front of the fire later, a grown up drink at the age of 10, 11, 12...

On my pig hunting expedition yesterday I bought white corn flour, the yellow having sold out. The whole of Brooklyn baking cornbread...I made bread from a recipe on the back: very good. The first slice I ate for breakfast with the leftovers of the red currant and raspberry jam I made in the summer. The second was quintessentially and almost archaically American: amelanchier (Juneberry/shad) jam made from the berries Marijke and I harvested from beside the East River in June.

Cornbread:

2 cups corn flour

4 tsps baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 egg

1 1/2 cups milk

Preheat oven to 450'F. Grease a baking pan and put in the oven to heat. Beat egg and whisk into milk. Add this to the dry ingredients in a bowl, stir well and pour into hot, greased pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes.