Broccoli Cornbread

There are a few recipes in my recipe book that I've been making for so long that I honestly don't have a clue of where they started from.  Some of those recipes have taken twists and turns along the way as I've cared more and learned more about the food my family eats.  Broccoli Cornbread is a great example of one of those recipes.  It started as kind of a dump recipe...you know, where you dump a bunch of stuff in together and then toss it in the oven.   Then we started eating more natural foods and less processed foods.  Broccoli Cornbread had always been a great dish, a yummy way to get things like broccoli and cottage cheese into picky kids, but I started to feel not-so-great about the cornbread mix.  And using frozen broccoli seemed silly when I had such fantastic fresh broc from the garden.  So I adjusted, and I think the current version is better than ever.

First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a 9 by 13 pan and set it aside.

Chop up a large head of broccoli into small florets, then blanch it in boiling water for 5 minutes.  Drain and set the broccoli aside.  You can also use a thawed bag of chopped broccoli.

Chop one large onion into small dice.

In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 eggs, 3/4 cup cottage cheese (I prefer the small curd for this), 1/2 cup sour cream, a half teaspoon of salt, and 2 tablespoons melted butter.

 In a separate bowl, mix together 2/3 cup flour, 1/2 cup cornmeal, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, and a pinch of salt.  If you'd like, you can just use a box of corn muffin mix here, or, you can use this mix in other places where you might use a box of corn muffin mix.

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet, and mix until well combined.  Stir in the broccoli.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake at 400 for about 30 minutes, until the bread has set all the way through.

This is a great side dish to chicken or a bean dish.  Leftovers are handy to snack on or as part of a healthy breakfast.

I'm sure that this dish will live on in my recipe book and continue to morph with our ever-changing lives, but for now, this suits us perfectly.