Cherry preserves.

Everyone has at least one, a plan for a humble dinner, the thing you know you can make when you just need something to eat and it doesn't need to be fancy: you know you can throw it together (or in dire circumstances, you can open a can and heat it). (Don't tell me you don't do this. It will depress me beyond measure if you don't.)

For me, there are several potential humble dinners. (I'll set the can opener dinners to the side. Those are the desperate dinners, and they're worth predicting and planning for. Like, laying in a case or so of those cans. But I digress.)

The humble dinner! It often involves eggs and often cheese. There is the savory version--in my house, the green chile quiche, for which you want to have a can of green chiles on hand. My mother made this dish, and when I became a woman, I put aside childish things and embraced it for what it so excellently was: a savory cheese pudding with chiles in it that would warm the heart of humankind and nourish the starving. Many's the day when I've made this, weary in well-doing and what not, and like charity, it never faileth. (You can sort of approximate the recipe from this post.)

[parenthentical note: if Google tries to correct my Biblical spellings one. more. time. I will freak out. that is all.]

these are actually David Lebovitz's cherry preserves
--it's pretty close to how I made them, except I just
used a sharp knife and not a cherry pitter. I had a
cherry pitter once, but then it broke. 

On the less savory side of the humble dinner,  there is the cottage cheese pancake. Also involving eggs and also involving cheese, it takes to all sorts of sweet garnishes, such as jam and cut up fruit. (Here is the recipe.) But tonight in the very vortex of our hunger, I remembered that I had a little pint of cherry preserves that I had laid by like a pioneer or a Boy Scout, so that in the depths, yea! the very depths of winter, I would be able to pull it out of my freezer, kiss it on the lips  (totally figurative) and eat it with pancakes.

The people, that is what we did: we made cottage cheese pancakes, we opened a half pint of apricot jam and thawed a pint of cherry preserves, and we ate it up.

And lo, it was very good. Very good indeed.

Jubilate Cornmeal.

For I will consider cornmeal:

1. For it takes the form of cornbread, the bread of my mother's people.
2. For it is delightful when eaten with soup or chili or cold for breakfast.
   
3. Also, hot for breakfast.
4. For it is often also eaten in muffin form, on the aforementioned occasions, as well as scarfed down when there are leftovers in the middle of the afternoon for no good reason except that they are delicious and they are there.
5. For there is also johnnycake, in which form cornmeal makes another appearance at breakfast, the better to demonstrate its happy relationship with butter and maple syrup.
6. For its sweetness is inherent!
   
7. For polenta, which in humbler form is known as "corn grits" or even "cornmeal mush":
   
8. For these familiar names do nothing to diminish its suavity, whether made with salted water and butter or broth and gilded with a dusting of cheese,
   
9. Nor can polenta's versatility be overstated: it can be dished by the ladleful and eaten soft, or allowed to set and constructed therefore in various architectures, such as tortas, interleaved with mushroom ragouts or garlicky tomato sauces. Or ratatouille.
   
10. For I do not exaggerate, not even in the slightest,
    
11. For one can also make baked goods crunch with the addition of cornmeal: little biscuits flavored with orange zest and eaten with a chocolate pudding,
    
12. For even polenta poundcake, as flexible and classic as any ordinary poundcake, but with a somehow Central American nuance:
    
13. For it is maizecake.