The Cornbread Fiasco

I just need to preface this entry by telling you that my best friend is a vegetarian. Well, technically she's a pescatarian (she eats seafood). I used to be a vegetarian myself, so I'm sensitive to how hard it is to be an herbivore in a carnivore's world. Wiley food manufacturers like to sneak meat products into foods you wouldn't expect.
That being said, I decided to make cornbread today to bring to a friend's bonfire. I figured that if my best friend was coming, she'd have something to snack on since she can't eat the chili. I decided to make mexi-cornbread, with pepperjack cheese and spices.
I dumped both boxes of cornbread mix into the bowl and got my other ingredients out. As I was measuring out my milk and taking eggs out of the carton, I decided to check out the ingredients. I figured it would be corn meal, a little sugar, and maybe some preservatives, right? WRONG. The first ingredient was wheat flour. Wheat flour? I thought this was cornbread. Corn was number two, followed by....lard??? Three kinds of lard. Lard from animal sources. (They made this fact very clear.) Why does lard need to be in cornbread? Can't they just use butter, or vegetable oil? I never expected anything like that to be in cornbread mix. Did I eat this stuff when I was a vegetarian?
OK, so my friend won't be able to eat the cornbread. I'd just have to make something else, along with the cornbread, that she can eat. So I continued mixing in all my spices: cumin, chili powder, garlic pepper, and some cilantro. I like spices. Seriously, if you can't handle my spice-itude, get out of my kitchen. Haha. After all the spices were mixed in, it was time for the cheese. I pulled a big package of pepperjack out of the fridge and started shredding it over the bowl. As I was shredding, a huge hunk of cheese fell off right into the cornbread mixture. So now I have cornbread mix all over the outside of my cheese...what to do? Well, I picked it up and started shredding the sides that were covered in batter. I couldn't wash it off, so I ended up putting more cheese in than I had planned, but I guess more cheese is better, right? :)
I haven't tried the cornbread yet, but it looks very tasty. I also made beer bread (sooo easy, if you've never made it I highly recommend trying) and a chocolate spice layer cake. Yes, I like to bake. And my house was cold. Nothing like a 400-degree oven to warm up a cold kitchen.

Clumsy

I may possibly be one of the clumsiest people in the universe. I hardly ever cause serious damage to myself, but really isn't clumsy more about quantity than quality? I've conked myself on the head quite a few times, fallen and split my knees open, dropped stuff on myself, even broken a couple toes. I'm sure some people think I'm just careless, but really it's more like my brain is just too busy to pay attention. I'll be thinking about something, anything really--clouds, doing the dishes, existential philosophy--and all of a sudden, WHAM! Head smacks into cabinet, bowl of grapes lands on my foot, finger gets slammed in a door. Once I even fell off a stool while I was talking on the phone. True story. To make matters worse, I have two cats who like to circle around my feet while I'l walking. Now, if you've never had cats, this seems to be a pretty normal occurance, especially when they're hungry. My cat is especially good at this little dance, he can do figure-eights around my feet while I'm walking down the hallway and not miss a beat. He can even stare up at me with that cute little "feed me" look while he's doing it. I can't tell you how many times I've almost fallen because he'll walk into the exact spot where my foot was going to land. Then it's a quick jerk foot up-regain balance--move foot somewhere else dance. Not good for clumsy people, obviously. I haven't tried to dance for real since I was five, and that was just ballet and tap. This is cat dancing. Much harder. It's gotten so bad that I've told my fiance "If you ever find me dead on the floor, blame the cats. They probably tripped me and I fell to my death." Seriously.
So, if you ever hear about some woman in Indiana who mysteriously fell over and died in her own house, you'll know what happened.