Mama's Cornbread Dressin'

My mom makes the best cornbread dressin' on the planet. And I'm not just sayin' that cause she's my mom. It's a proven fact. Everyone who's tasted her dressin' has said it's the best. When I made the decision to go vegan the day after Thanksgiving in 2004, one of my biggest concerns was the fact that I'd never be able to eat her dressin' again.

But thankfully, the following Thanksgiving, my mom figured out how to veganize it with homemade vegan cream of celery soup in place of the canned stuff in the non-vegan version. Now on Thanksgiving, "my" dressin' tastes way better than the old kind. Unfortunately, my mom isn't really the type that writes down recipes.

I had to go to a Winter Solstice potluck yesterday, and I really wanted to try my hand at Mama's Dressin' and in the process, record a recipe for my cookbook. Here's what it looked like:

I used my own cornbread recipe (that's also going in my cookbook) and made a triple batch since I knew there'd be about 30 people at this potluck. The result: Good, but not as good as mama's. I think I need to tweak my cornbread recipe because, as it stands now, it contains a lot of flax in place of eggs. The result when making a larger batch (and thus using more flax) was a little more gummy that I would have liked. So next time, I will use egg replacer instead of flax and see what happens (that's what my mom does in her vegan cornbread).

But it was still really good. And the leftovers were excellent served alongside the Garlicky Sauteed Kale with Tahini Sauce from Vegan with a Vengeance:

Though I've seen this dish on numerous blogs, it was the first time I'd tried tahini sauce on my kale. And now I doubt I'll ever eat kale without it.