The Alpha Male in my life was still asleep. He’d leave later that day, on the 12:30 pm train, Vermont to New York.
I knew, when he awoke, that we would almost surely dalliance (which I wanted as much as he would). I also knew we would inevitably run short on time.
And yet, I also wanted to make him a good farewell breakfast.
I thought I’d get it started while he still slept. Then I’d come back upstairs, and see if he was awake, and then…
Hmmm: what dish would lend itself to this plan?
###
I decided to make Featherbed Eggs.
Or, my version of same. I had leftover cornbread, a key ingredient.
What a good old book you are! Thank you, Marion Cunningham…
I’d learned Featherbed Eggs — a not-uncommon layered, do-ahead savory breakfast bread pudding —in its original form from the late Marion Cunningham. It’s in her 1987 The Breakfast Book, my copy of which is well-used and well-loved. Everyone else, including me, had called the dish “strata,” and I had made less-inspired versions of it. But I loved Marion’s cozy, inviting renaming, as well as the simplicity and clarity of her directions, and it opened me up to the dish’s possibilities.
I’d rung many changes on her Featherbed Eggs over the years. Especially the years back when I — with my late husband, Ned — had owned and run an inn, Dairy Hollow House, in the Ozark Mountain spa town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
In that period, that time and place, Featherbed Eggs, made in the manner I finally deemed perfect, was in regular and triumphant rotation.
When I say well-used and well-loved, I mean it. When people bring me beaten up books of mine to sign, the egg white dribbled still holding the a few pages together, I always feel happy and honoted (even though it means they’re not buying new books).
I believe it was Ned who came up with the brilliant idea of using leftover cornbread rather than conventional wheaten bread.
From there, going in a Southwesterly direction seemed obvious. Green chilies for a bit of heat, little dabs of cream cheese or Neufchatel, to make nice little surprising pockets of creaminess mitigating that heat, giving each bite of the baked casserole its own pleasure. Serving it with a nice fresh pico de gallo-ish cilantro’d salsa on the side was a further natural progression.
But where was my recipe that morning in Vermont?
Though I remembered Featherbed Eggs clearly, it had been a while since I’d made them. I wanted the exact egg-milk-cornbread proportions.
I’ve published my version of the dish twice, once in Passionate Vegetarian, once in The Cornbread Gospels, attributing the recipe title to Marion both times (the attribution is in PV, but sadly, and not by my choice, was lost to editing in CG).
Aggravatingly enough, neither of my working kitchen copies of these books (my own books!) were at hand. I didn’t want to trash a brand new copy from my supply.
My Mac, however, was nearby.
I thought, “Well, probably someone somewhere on the net has reposted that recipe.”
I Googled it and sure ’nuff, up came this story, by Laura, of The Spiced Life.
It begins, “No matter what paroxysms of joy are brought on by various cornbreads over the next months (years) investigating The Cornbread Gospels, the book’s most useful contribution to my life will probably be the myriad of leftover cornbread recipes it provides.”
What cookbook author would not be delighted! Paroxysms, indeed!
I must have known about this post at the time (2009) and I hope, if I did, that I wrote and thanked Laura. But if so, I’d forgotten it. (If not, then right now, thank you, Laura).
And oh, it was beyond pleasing to find it, just like that.
What Laura posted was not exactly my recipe, as she states, but it was close enough that I could make what I wanted successfully.
###
So. I got the Featherbed Eggs made, and the pico, and I preheated the oven. But should I put them in? They’d bake for half an hour. How long after he woke would we be…?
I decided to leave them out.
Sometime later, upstairs: “Okay, before we get too deeply involved here, I made a casserole for breakfast, it has to bake 30 minutes. Should I go put it in the oven now, or…? ”
He said, “Go ahead and do it now.” I pattered downstairs and slid the dish in and came back upstairs.
30 minutes later the timer on his phone rang. Good timing for the Featherbeds, bad timing dalliance-wise. He looked down at me. “I’ll get it out of the oven. You stay here.” (Like I was going anywhere). He pattered down. I heard him open the oven door, slide out the dish, set it down, patter back up.
“Were they puffy?” I asked.
“Very puffy,” he said. “Now, be quiet. Where was I?”
###
By the time we got down to breakfast, it was almost 11:00. I quickly sautéed some of the Field Roast vegetarian soysage with apple and sage, and put a pretty little pile of fresh watermelon, strawberries, blueberries, and a wheel of orange on one side of the plate.
Featherbed Eggs, done in ramekins (these bake in about 15 minutes, not thirty).
“Wow,” he said, taking a bite. “And what is this? Whatever it is, it’s really good. ” I told him what it was, and about finding Laura’s post. too.
###
A nice well-done-thou-good-and-faithful-servant moment for any cookbook author: you make one of your own recipes after not having done it for a while, and you go, Oh! This is good.
This is my own personal favorite ofd my cookbooks; I continue to reference it often. A lasting sadness, that Ned never got to his wife, the 50 year-old cover-girl.
I sometimes get asked about how it feels seeing my material used online. I have mostly learned to love and be flattered by seeing my recipes used and referenced thus. I do get miffed is if someone quotes the whole thing word for word in its direct entirety without adding anything original of their own, and without attribution — without so much as a “this recipe originally appeared in…” or “this was inspired by… “
Now that is just plain rude.
But most people are not rude.
And it helps spread the word: not only about my book, but about good food, and a particular good recipe, and how to cook, and improvising to taste. Laura, in her writing and photographs, used my recipe to bring out and sing out her own personal creativity and storytelling in cooking as well as writing.
And we then, most likely, reinvent, and pass on further the inspiration or information we received, teaching others.
Cooking is a fluid art, changed by cooks. And I think this is a truth everyone who is learning to cook is served by understanding.
All recipes, like all lives, are works in progress.
We are, all of us, always, students and teachers.
###
Eating his Featherbeds at my oak dining room table, brought from Arkansas, a table that had once been in the inn;s restaurant, my guy said to me, “Now I see why you asked me if they were puffy. ”
Because, by the time we got downstairs to eat them, they weren’t.
I slid the laptop over to him. “See what Laura said,” I told him.
He skimmed her post and came to the next to last line. ” ‘Bake until the eggs are set and a little puffy–although Dragonwagon warns the puff will sink when the dish is pulled out of the oven.'”
He looked at me. “You warned them,” he said.
Laura’s rendition of the Featherbeds, from The Spiced Life
“I did.” I said. “And I’m warning you; we have to leave for the train in about 15 minutes.”
He made his train.
I came back home after dropping him there and seeing him off.
Bittersweet, always. I washed the breakfast dishes, made the bed. Moved back from partnered life rhythms to those that are solo. The transition is always disorienting, a little sad.
Then, within a few hours, I get reoriented. I get happy again.
That night, as he was arriving at his apartment in New York, I had the leftover Featherbed Eggs, cold, for dinner, on top of my hilltop.
#DinnerwithDragonwagon
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Love your stories and your recipes! Being a southerner cornbread is a staple
Boy, idn’t it the truth, Carolyn. So glad the South adopted me so I could become truly cornbread-literate. I treasure that even after I moved to Vermont, when I go back to Arkansas, so many friends say, “Welcome home.” And I’ll never forget when Mary Gay Shipley, owner of That Bookstore in Blytheville, told me, briskly and decisively, “Yeo, we’ll still claim you.” Sweet.
Thank you, Carolyn. I promise to keep telling stories…xo
Oh I love Mary Gay Shipley!
FYI – she no longer owns TBIB. So sad…
Yummy~
Dear, dear Crescent,
Just before moving to Spain in 2003 I by some MIRACLE came across your book, Passionate Vegetarian. Reading the introduction and the courage it took you to complete it left me happy and in tears for a week. The book is a bribe in our house, my daughter also has one up in Barceona.
I love your stories, they are so real and down to earth. NEVER stop writing.
Now, how in HELL can I get a copy of your Cornbread Gosepes and Bean by Bean. I have been all over the web, each time told they are ah, looking and will advise ……months have gone by. Any suggestions?
Ah, here it is! Yes, it WASA PASSIONATE V! I’m so happy — that’s the one I too use most often.
And you are right, that introduction was almost impossibly hard. It started at 18 pages and I cut and cut and cut — how to put a 23 year marriage in few pages, make it true but not totally depress everyone AND have it be relevant to food? I think to this day it may be the piece of my own non-fiction I am most proud of.
So thank you. And thank you too for “NEVER stop writing.” My mother died at 98; her last book was published in her early 90’s. So, I have a role model, to say nothing of sturdy DNA.
No clue as to why you’re having such difficulty getting the books. I assume you’ve surely tried amazon? I’ll check with my publisher — I don’t think they do any direct sales, however.
WOW, a lot of typos. I found the greyscale page hard to see.
Your book is a bible in my house. I moved to Spain in 2005 and my name is Geraldine.
I will look it over again for typos. The beauty of internet is one can always correct. Hmm, not sure about greyscale… every computer, handheld, etc shows things differently, I told, so I’m not clear what is wrong on yours nor how to fix it. I would if I could!
So glad you like my work — I’m guessing the book you mean is PASSIONATE VEGETARIAN? I have several out so…
Spain. Mmmm. I would like go live abroad for a year. I keep thinking, Italy…
I love Marion Cunningham too! Thanks for the recipe and story, can’t wait to make the Featherbed eggs in ramekins. I think I WILL go the cornbread route (thanks for spreading the gospel!).
Best,
John
Oh, I think you’ll love the cornbread, John, and I so much appreciate your enthusiasm. Let me know how they turn out for you. I met Marion a few times at culinary conferences — a delightful, lovely lady. Old school in the best way, and warm.
My children’s cherished copy of Will It Be Okay? having been read until the very crackly pages were falling out of the paperback glue, and now being possessed by a five year old granddaughter in need of its gentle wisdom, I took to the Internet in search of a copy…..
And found all your other books! Pure joy to everything but my budget. I think I now possess them all, or will after the postal service does its work.
Awaiting cookbooks with eagerness……
Oh, Lisa, thank you! I am hoping to work on a reissue on Will It Be Okay — even my own copies are falling apart!
I hope you will thoroughly enjoy adventuring with my work in the kitchen, too.
Mmmmm. So deliciously cute, those little ramekins. Can’t wait to get some and make these!
They’re easy, Dida (and yeah, you CAN do them with regular bread instead of cornbread…) And I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like ’em, including kids. xxxooo
Love your Passionate Vegetarian, After doing a favor for a friend who happen to be volunteering at the local library sorting books for the friends of the library bookstore in the lib ray, I turned around and saw on the rack a BRAND NEW COPY OF THE PASSIONATE! Since it was a paperback it was a dollar! Instant Karma , she let me buy it!
I(t is because of that cookbook that i can now make rice without burning it and was able to not only make your pea soup but love eating it ( nothing not even ham , when I was a major meat eater, got me to eat pea soup).
I had made the pot of soup to go out with the people who feed the homeless late at night twice a week year round abound our Capitol in Madison Wi.
For many reasons most homeless are meat eaters, so they were not thrilled , but Chaous got them to sample it and since i I had not skimped on the homemade stock or the fresh herbs,and used many organic ingredients they liked it much to their surprise
score one for the Dragonwagon team!
Now if you only had a cookbook with a recipe for meeting a life partner in ones 60’s(though i do look in my 50s LOL , not one of those model perfect like in the Senior singles sites but boy can I cook esp. with your help
by the way a heads up if you have not yet discovered their web site and business, Season With Spice, www,seasonwithspice.com
…A young couple in Buffalo Minnesota who met overseas , married and now run a Spice business and even send a Thank You note handwritten with every order.
They make some of their own blends, and her recipes are dynamite and mostly simple.
A real boon for someone like me who is supposed to eat vegan and cooks for herself and has a labor intensive life because of no car.
I am collecting the simplest recipes from many sources because i really have to limit my intake of “regular food” Esp .when i travel and as I stay in Hostels, one obstacle down, I can cook but ned to simplify.
Many of her recipes will go with me. I find I can even substitute tofu in some, but she has many that do not use meat/
I learned about them on the Splendid Table so you could go too the archive and listen to the old show with them on it
Have fun, I am sure you are going to love it!
Oh, by the way this grey print is very hard on older eyes esp, since i have to look at the keyboard when I type
Have a great weekend and thanks for all the great food you have added to my life.
You can’t go wrong when cornbread and green chile’s are in a recipe. This dish sounds yummy and the ramekins make a nice presentation.
Sounds like your morning was filled with love, laughter and good, healthy food. The perfect send off !
This recipe looks and sounds marvelous. I’m all about cornbread, in fact I have a t-shirt that says, Make Love, Not Cornbread. I think you need it…
My Auntie Lesley (also from Eureka Springs) introduced me to your website. I love your writing and will definitely be making Featherbeds!
Tari Pie
Thanks, Tari! You are definitely welcome here.