Cornbread Anyone?

Help is coming today to work with me on "My Secret Project", but I will take a minute to talk about CORNBREAD. A blogger friend from Piggies Heaven is not familiar with it. She is located in France.We,in our prospective countries or regions, take for granted the foods we grow, cook and eat, but for some, they may seem foreign.Even here in the United States, with folks venturing out and settling so far from their original home state,we run into folks daily who are not familiar with Cornbread. We have friends from Illinois and Connecticut who have never heard of cornbread.Corn has been a very basis food grown here in this area for centuries.Our forefathers used it during the days when the Pilgrims first settled here with Columbus in 1492.The Indians,if I remember correctly, introduced it to the Pilgrims. Since folks across the Big Water are not that familiar with it, I'm sure that is the way it began. Nevertheless,cornmeal has become a staple in our household. We bake it in the oven,we fry it in the skillet, we mix it with flour and seasonings to roll our seafood in for frying,we add it to certain pies for a crusty topping,we deep fry it with onions for hush puppies to be served along with our deep fried fish,and we use it as an additive in lots of other dishes.It is a very versatile product.My Mother was raised in lower Louisiana, so the foods used in this area, were foreign to her,too. She was a excellent cook for many years,but with raising nine children and not being familiar with the Kentucky way of cooking, she had to do a lot of experimenting to please Dad,especially,and all of us kids,yet come up with enough of something,anything, to feed us all.Dad wanted Kentucky type food since that is what he was raised on, but us kids learned to eat just about anything. Anything derived from whatever products were available locally anyway.French cuisine was only offered when Mom's family would come to visit from South Louisiana.They always made it a point to cook up some of their Cajun dishes for us all to enjoy while they were visiting.Mom would fix us a dish on occasion, which we called cush cush. I have learned that cush is a product in itself, but Mom would make her version of it using cornmeal in a skillet,stirring constantly,adding just a drop or two of water at a time,as it cooked, till the finished result was nothing more than crumbled cornbread,minus the egg and milk.So that's one food we ate a lot as kids,and I still eat crumbled cornbread often in a bowl of milk even today.That's Pop's favorite dish too(although if you cooked up a skillet of cush cush, he'd die a natural death.)He wants his cornbread cooked up in the oven or in a skillet. I,personally, prefer it pan fried in a skillet in individual corn cakes.There is something about  frying that makes anything taste soooooo good. It must be the calories.I'm sure there are many folks who have different versions of their cornbread recipe, but I make it nightly for Pop, and all I use is:

1 to 1 1/2 cup of cornmeal MIX  (the MIX already has the baking powder and salt added)
1 small egg (Our hens lay different size eggs.We use the larger eggs for breakfast)
1 Tablespoon of oil. Stir all of that while adding your water,milk,or buttermilk(your choice)until you have a heavy batter.If pan frying,just add it to your heated,lightly oiled skillet,in separate patties,letting them fry,till golden,then flip them over,letting the other side cook to golden.

Everyone does things their own way, and you will find a procedure that suits you best, but the finished product will taste wonderful. There's something about warm cornbread that is so satisfying,whether you eat it with a pat of butter, crumble it in milk or your favorite soup or bowl of beans.Let me know how you did.