When we asked our cousins to suggest favorite family recipes for our Snavely-Blough reunion; Peg and Tim nominated Corn Pudding. It was Tim’s grandmother’s recipe and the corn dish was a perfect fit for our Iowa reunion. Grandma Jackie’s Corn Pudding was delicious.

We held a family reunion this July of our Blough first and second cousins and Snavely first cousins. The place was Waterloo, Iowa, where our family ancestors settled in the 1800’s. As a child I loved to visit my grandparents on their farm every summer in August. Sweet corn was at its peak and we couldn’t eat enough boiled corn-on-the cob. For this reunion, cousins suggested favorite recipes which we prepared for the meals. I haven’t been back to Iowa since 1980. It was reassuring to see that my grandparent’s farm was still there. When I was a child the farm was far out in the countryside down gravel roads. Now Waterloo is sprawling out and almost reaches their farm.Black Hawk County in Iowa is corn country-exceptionally good quality corn is grown there. In fact the farm land is so fertile that the corn is often grown for seed crop (for field corn) for the major seed companies; using special pollination techniques. The sweet corn grown for eating (a different variety) is especially sweet.

For this reunion, we cooked all the lunch and supper meals including suggestions submitted by cousins and recipes from several collections of heritage family cookbooks. I’m not sure I would recommend cooking all the meals for anther reunion–it was quite time consuming and alot of work. But it worked well this time–great kitchen in the Church of the Brethren social hall and lots of “kitchen helpers”. It made a good activity to meet and visit with other cousins and get in some elbow grease washing dishes. It certainly was inexpensive compared to catered meals.

Peg and Tim suggested a recipe for corn pudding. It was Tim’s grandmother’s recipe and it turned out to be one of the favorite recipes of the weekend. It is a treasured family recipe; luckily Peg was able to write it down while the grandmother could still recall the ingredients. Here are Peg and Tim trying out the dishes at the Saturday supper meal.

The corn pudding is creamy and with perhaps just a touch of sweetness; with lots of eggs and corn flavor. It uses both canned and cream-style corn and is baked in the oven for an hour until the eggs set. The pudding is bubbly and a knife inserted into the pudding comes out clean. The recipe reminds me of custard. Here are the ingredients for the corn pudding.

And here’s the dish mixed up and ready to bake.

I made the recipe again once home. Since the theme was fresh Iowa corn; I tried substituting fresh boiled corn cut off the cob for the canned whole kernel corn. Substitute 1-1/2 cup fresh cooked corn kernels and 1/2 tsp salt for the can of whole, drained corn. Don’t substitute the creamed corn. This variation turned out well.For the reunion, Peg tripled the recipe for 30 folks. The corn pudding fit into two 4-qt pans or 1/2 size steam table pans (approx 10″ x 13″ x 2-1/2″). At the end of the meal, the corn pudding was all gone! Thanks for sharing the recipe, Peg and Tim.

When I was young, our family usually visited Iowa in August. For this reunion we were a little early and most of the corn and tomato produce were imported from the southern states. But the last day a regional grocery store, Hy-Vee, featured Iowa-grown corn and tomatoes. We ate some at the reunion meals and brought some home.

The reunion was successful. And we haven’t changed at all–just a little older since the last reunion 4 years ago. We toured a cousin’s dairy farm; went on several John Deere tractor tours in Waterloo, visited family homes and showed lots of pictures; mementos, heritage and did lots of visiting. And of course we cooked.

Enjoy “Grandma Jackie’s Corn Pudding.”