Take a gander at most boxed mixes for things like cakes, cookies, and breads, and it’s a hodgepodge of chemicals, fillers, dyes, and colorings.  These things aren’t needed to make the product delicious and certainly not to make it healthful.  Instead, they’re used to stabilize the ingredients, so that the box can linger on a shelf for weeks and months.  Then we take that science experiment into our bodies.

That’s why it’s such a joy to make food from scratch. You know every ingredient that’s going into it.  You don’t need a science degree or to become a part-time chemist to understand what you’re ingesting.  What’s even better is when it’s so easy, tasty, and simple that you’re left asking yourself why anyone would make it from a box in the first place. 

That’s how I felt making Cornbread Biscuits from Vegan Brunch.  They came together in no time at all with ingredients that most everyone would have on hand.  I popped them into the oven for 14 minutes, and they were hot and ready.  It makes you wonder how we all got duped into believing that it’s easier to use a mix in the first place.  The cornbread biscuits were much more flavorful and moist than any boxed cornbread I’ve ever had, and they paired perfectly with sautéed collard greens, green beans tossed in Sun-Dried Tomato and Walnut Pesto from Vegan Table, and corn on the cob.  It was a perfect summer meal to a corn-fed Iowa girl, getting back to her roots on a warm July evening.