A Hankering for Cornbread Dressing

                                    

I have a 'hankering' for some good ole southern cornbread dressing this morning. With mashed potatoes and gravy. Forget the turkey! 

My Mama made the best cornbread dressing ever! 

Oh, that makes me remember the time I tried making dressing for the first time. It was 1957 and we were living in an apartment on Castle Street in Honolulu. There were 8 apartments and our landlord was Mr. Ching. He was a quiet man but I can still, in my mind's ear, hear him shuffling around the property wearing those leather flip-flops of his. 

picture taken from internet

He was kind, a good landlord. Once a month he'd host a luau out in the parking lot in front of our building. Those were always fun. 

Shirley entertaining everyone at one of our luaus. 

One day he came up to me  and asked, 'you from the south, right? How 'bout you making some of that yellow pudding for our next luau?'

Yellow pudding? Maybe he meant banana pudding. It's yellow. Or maybe a lemon pie, or just plan vanilla pudding. I had no clue what he was asking me to make. 

I asked Alice who lived next door. What the heck is Mr. Ching talking about? 

" Oh, he loved cornbread dressing that a previous resident used to make."

Cornbread Dressing!!

picture taken from AllRecipes online

Lordy mercy on me. I'd never made that dish in my life. And, this was decades before Google and it was too expensive to call my Mama for advice. In fact, we didn't even have a telephone!  So, I just winged it.

Luau night came, the group was in fine spirits and I nervously sat my dish of cornbread dressing among all the other yummy food on the table. The salads, the veggies, the poi, the lomi-lomi salmon.

My dressing was a disaster! Dry, not enough seasoning, just awful.

Guess you know Mr. Ching never asked me to make yellow pudding again. 

Poor Mr. Ching. Well, I tried. I really did. I can make cornbread dressing now but it never measures up to my Mama's.