Corn Pudding and P. Susan

So the year this story takes place has escaped me, as time often does. But I had recently moved to Santa Fe and my friend P. Susan dialed me up to let me know she was planning to make a last minute reservation to fly in for Thanksgiving. Surely I had invited her a million times and she finally took me up on the offer. Our good pal, Katharine Moore agreed to tag along and I couldn't be more delighted.

I know they hadn't planned to stay more than a few days, which was probably good because P. Susan was somehow agreeing to sleep on the hard, brick floor in our living room next to the fireplace. I was constantly worried and having major anxiety thinking she would roll so close that her long hair would get clipped by the flames. It didn't happen, thank goodness.

When my two friends arrived, my friend Jeff was already visiting from Chicago and so my house started to get crowded. We didn't seem to mind, because during the day we could still use the patio when the sun was out. Before she even arrived, P. Susan inquired about the Thanksgiving menu. I went down the usual list- turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, broccoli casserole, sweet potatoes... and I'm pretty sure she stopped me at the end with, "No corn pudding?" Corn pudding? Whoever even heard of such a thing? She said she would not eat Thanksgiving dinner without corn pudding. After finding out more about it, the dish sounded wonderful and I was surprised to hear it was a savory dish and not a dessert. I asked for the recipe. She didn't have one and started rattling off ingredients she thought were involved: corn, creamed corn, cream, butter, a crusty topping, eggs, sour cream, cornmeal? I am not sure she knew at all what this dish was made with and I was left to my own devices. I pulled about a dozen different recipes, all of them omitting at least one of the ingredients she listed. I could not find the exact recipe. I remember calling her and going over each recipe- after each one, I could sense her stomping her foot, "NO! That is not it!"

Eventually, I had to just purchase all of the ingredients and hope that I could put together something that resembled her favorite Thanksgiving dish. Turns out, we did it! And it is a wonderful compliment to so many meals. I hadn't thought about it in a while, but I recreated the dish recently for a family dinner. It came out just as beautifully as it had the first time around and I managed to create it by memory. I think this dish will now become part of my own Thanksgiving tradition, all of these years later...