My youngest sister and I always joke that my dad, the family cook, only makes food in mega mode. Curry chicken, for example, has like, 20 chicken thighs in it, even if there’s only four people eating dinner. Potato salad comes in a giant stockpot enough to feed an army of 20; he made one of them for the kid’s table at my cousin’s wedding, even though most of the kids didn’t even eat solid food yet. My dad’s pancakes are bigger than your face. I think it comes from feeding and cooking for a family of five when both he and my mom worked full-time our whole childhood. Make a lot, and there’s leftovers for a later date.

Chuckle as I may, I kind of have mega-itis, too. It gets really bad around the holidays. This year I made three — yes, three — 9×13 pans of cornbread. Three pans of cornbread to make stuffing that only calls for half a pan. I figured people might want to snack on cornbread, too. But three pans — well, it’s overkill. So I froze a bunch of it, and we’ve been eating it gradually since November with chili night, or when Ge Ge gets homesick for Charleston (which, thankfully, is less and less these days).

Then I discovered another easy way to rid ourselves of the cornbread burden I’ve created: cornbread “bread” pudding. Oh, Molly. It is something.