So for the first time since my relationship ended in October after I moved across the country (left friends/family/career/ecetera behind) for it, I tried out a dating option- Facebook Dating.
I thought it would be fun to look and I set up a basic profile. I clicked through a couple profiles, and then I immediately froze up and started crying like when I was broken up with and I deleted it immediately.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
I’m not ready to date. I’ve had crushes (including at the moment) since things ended, but I’m nowhere ever ready to date.
I feel so stupid, and I know I shouldn’t. I feel like I am just a bundle of flaws, but I am told that I hold myself to too high of a standard. I thought I was making progress and building my life and working on me by making friends and doing sports and Cooking Eorzea, but I am not succeeding as much as I would like.
I am trying to be positive and I am honestly trying. This week…just isn’t as forward moving as I want.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
Cornbread, the twenty-second recipe in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, has an ‘Easy’ difficulty level and is from the La Noscea region of Erozea. I was thrilled to get out the cast-iron skillet again and use it in the oven! I hadn’t really used it much since way back when Cooking Eorzea‘s third week recipe (Farmer’s Breakfast).
I’ve also never made cornbread of any sort before, and I have not been a real fan of it because it just tastes like cornmeal and is usually burned whenever I eat it.
Here is what it is supposed to look like!
Featured Ingredient of the Week
This week’s Cooking Eorzea featured ingredient is cornmeal! Cornmeal is made from ground corn.
A shock, I know.
I’ve never actually used cornmeal before, but I have seen it in aisles at stores before. That was the deciding factor to make this ingredient this week’s Featured Ingredient of the Week.
I was surprised that it isn’t as finely ground as all-purpose flour or wheat flour, and it clumped up nicely for this photograph. There isn’t a whole lot more to say about it, honestly, other than the fact that I definitely have a LOT of it to use for this and future recipes.
My Cooking Attempt
Let’s take a look at all of the ingredients that I’ve used for this week’s Cooking Eorzea cornbread attempt. I still have the same brown sugar and all-purpose flour and wheat flour from prior Cooking Eorzea recipe attempts:
First, I melted down an entire bar of unsalted butter on the stove. I ended up turning up the stovetop heat midway through as I was getting a bit impatient with how SLOW it was melting down.
Once the butter turned golden brown, I poured it into a cup and I set it aside to cool down.
After starting to preheat the oven, I greased up the cast-iron skillet with some additional butter.
Setting aside the cast-iron skillet for the moment, I dumped the cornmeal, the all-purpose flour, the whole-wheat flour, the light brown sugar, the baking powder, and the salt all together into a large bowl.
I then whisked all of the dry ingredients together until it was well-blended together.
Setting the dry mixture aside for the moment, I got out a second bowl and added the melted butter (it had cooled by now), olive oil, honey, eggs, and buttermilk together inside of it. I then whisked it all together until it was a wet mixture.
I then poured the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
I then whisked all of the dry and wet ingredients together until I had the cornmeal mixture completely blended together.
I then poured the final cornbread mixture into the cast-iron skillet, and I ended up having to use a spatula to get the last bits of it out of the bowl.
This is what the cornmeal mixture looked like inside of the cast-iron skillet when I was done.
By this point, the oven had finished preheating and so I placed the skillet inside and I left the cast-iron skillet inside to bake for twenty-five minutes!
And here is the final dish after I pulled it out of the oven! I also used a pair of coasters from the latest SQUARE ENIX CAFE collaboration with FINAL FANTASY XIV Online for decoration.
I then cut out a piece and tried it out! It was really buttery and honey flavored, and you could smell both ingredients throughout the kitchen as well. It was so, so, so rich and delicious and it turns out that I really do like cornbread- if it is freshly made and not burned.
Afterword
I would absolutely make this dish again, and it is now my go-to dish for in-person work events. It was super easy to make, and the cast-iron skillet worked wonders as it baked the cornbread all of the way through. I ate about one-fourth of it in one go, and I had to stop myself from eating it all at once (I ended up sharing the rest with friends). This is definitely a dish worth making!
Let’s drive into the Cooking Eorzea ‘thank yous’! I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on Twitter.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game.
Next Week
Next week for Cooking Eorzea, I will be making Honey Muffins from the Thanalan region! I am excited to be using the cardamom again for a recipe, and I will be making a bunch of muffins. Please return next Friday to check it out!
Have you made cornbread before? What about in a cast-iron skillet?
Let us know in the comments below!
