Children of the Skillet Cornbread

So I will admit, it's been a while since I actually watched this movie. Sometimes (especially during the summer months), life gets a little bit too much. I've had weddings, birthdays, funerals...it's been a doosey. I'm actually on the bus right now on the way home from a wedding.
If you are as busy as me, you should make this cornbread and the chili I made a few weeks ago. It fed me for a long time. And if you're broke like me, you will also appreciate the value of this hearty combo.

I got the skillet cornbread recipe from the Pioneer Woman, but I added sugar because cornbread should be sweet. Sometimes I like to think about how awesome life would be if I could be a Pioneer woman and live off a ranch. I don't think the life is as glamorous as hers (mine would probably play more like Winter's Bone), but a girl can dream. Her life is probably fake, anyways.

People on ranches don't look like this.

Recipe: Skillet Cornbread

Ingredients:

1 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 cup sugar (optional)

1 cup buttermilk (yes, this technique works with almond/soy milk)

1/2 cup milk (once again, I used almond milk)

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup coconut oil

Start by combining the cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar in a large bowl. The original recipe did not call for sugar, but I like my cornbread on the sweeter side and this amount of sugar gives it a hint of sweetness. Add the buttermilk, milk, egg, and baking soda and mix until just combined. Melt the coconut oil in the microwave and drizzle in the mixture.

Coat a cast iron skillet with cooking spray and preheat it on medium-high heat. Pour the batter in and cook for a minute or two. Bake at 450 for about 20 minutes, or until the top of the cornbread is golden brown. Serve with some vegan chili!

Step-by-Step Instructions

Mix the cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar in a large bowl.

Stir in the buttermilk, milk, egg, baking soda, and salt

Spray a cast iron skillet with non-stick spray and preheat on medium high

Add the batter to the hot skillet and cook for a minute or two

Bake at 450 for about 20 minutes, or until the top is golden brown. Serve with some delicious vegan chili

Review: Children of the Corn

I'm sorry but I really didn't like this movie. My family watched it with me and agreed. It wasn't even a it's-so-bad-it's-good type deal. It was just bad. Somebody argue with me and try to convince me otherwise. I want to believe that it's a good one.

I'm not going to do a plot summary - if you really want to know what happens in the movie then you should read the book. I will put money on the fact that the book is leaps and bounds better than the movie. Instead of talking about this movie specifically, we're going to talk about my favorite author of all time - Stephen King

That's not me but I have that shirt.

I don't consider my self a Stephen King expert by any means, but I think I have read enough of his books and watched enough of movies to form a solid opinion about him. My college lit class (yeah the math majors had to take those too) was titled "Stephen King: Trash or Treasure?"; my humble opinion: treasure.

Every once in a while I'm underwhelmed by his novels (i.e. the later half of the Dark Tower series), but that is understandable with the volume of writing he has produced. I think that his characters in his books are really believable, and he especially understands the dirty, dark, nasty side of human nature. Mix that with a little supernatural and bizarre circumstances, and you have one hell of an entertaining story.

That being said, there are a lot of shit movies made out of his books out there. I haven't read Children of the Corn yet so I can't make a comparison, but I would wager that is at least tolerable while this movie was hardly so.

Let's briefly touch on a sample size of the movies that fell short of the books they tried to follow. I'm going to get it out of the way and say I didn't like The Shining. Don't get me wrong; I love Stanley Kubrick, but having read the book first, I think he missed so much that it made the movie un-enjoyable for this King nerd. The Running Man is another example of a movie that fell short of the awesome, dark, twisted short story it borrowed from. And those two movies are just the ones that people consider to be good! Lawnmower Man, Rose Manor, Dreamcatcher, and an uncountable number of terrible sequels (Pet Sematary) and remakes are almost so bad that they fall into the so-bad-it's-hilariously-good category. Almost.

A lot of those bad ones had King on the team making the movie. He even made appearances in them! That shows that he's not entirely off the hook here. He should just stick with writing the books and leave the movie making to the professionals. I will admit that his version of The Shining was much worse than Kubrick's.

That's not to say that there have been some truly fantastic adaptations of King novels. Many people don't know that Shawshank Redemption was originally a Stephen King short story. A short story. That movie was over 3 hours long. Want to know why it worked? They pretty much took most of the character's lines word-for-word from the novel. Morgan Freeman didn't hurt either, but it takes more than just divine intervention (heh) to make that movie as great as it is. The Green Mile is another one of my favorites where you can really tell that the creators of the film took their time shaping the story. Classics like Carrie, Misery, The Dead Zone, and probably more that I haven't seen yet also hit close to what King's books were trying to achieve.

There are just some King novels that will never be able to be made into a movie that has the same tone. There have been a lot of talks about making the Dark Tower series into a movie/miniseries franchise, and the effort is being spearheaded by Ron Howard. As much as I love the fellow ginger Howard, I am really doubtful that such a series is going to be great.When interviewed about this possible adaptation, King said one of "The Davids" would be better for the job (meaning Lynch or Cronenberg). I think he's close with this choice, but I still have my doubts.

For being a post about Children of the Corn, this is a pretty long tangent about not-that-movie. Let's summarize : Childeren of the Corn was a bad movie. Read the book (I will now ... free audiobook download!). Most Stephen King movies suck. Read the books. You can find them for like 50 cents at that garage sale down the street. The end.