Corn muffins or cornbread sticks and peaches or strawberries and vanilla ice cream over pound cake.

ps: slaw goes well with low country boil too!

I never had a great appreciation for corn bread until I made this wonderful stuff:

RONNI LUNDY'S REAL CORN BREAD

4 tablespoons drippings (canola oil is fine)
2 cups fine ground white cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 large egg
1 and 1/2 cups milk or buttermilk

Turn the oven on to 450 degrees. When it starts to get hot, put the drippings in a 9 inch cast iron skillet (or small cake pan, but a skillet is what you really want). Put the skillet in the oven and let it get really hot while you mix up the batter.

Mix cornmeal, salt, baking soda and baking powder together well in a bowl. Add the egg and milk and stir until just blended. Don't beat.

Remove the skillet from the oven and very carefully swirl the drippings around the pan to coat the inside. Drippings should be bubbly. If you're using butter and it's browned a bit, that fine. It'll make the cornbread yummy!

Pour the drippings into the cornbread batter, stir just enough to incorporate, pour the batter back into the skillet and pop into the oven. It will take 20-25 minutes for it to turn brown around the edges and get firm in the middle. Remove and turn upside down on a sturdy plate to turn the cornbread out. (If it sticks, you can serve it straight from the pan.) Pass while it's hot.

Jim

What is Low Country Boil?

I'd do Boston brown bread or Anadama bread and fruit pies or a bread pudding. Either pies or bread pudding can be served room temp, so you don't have to cook or reheat anything there. The Boston brown bread should be reheated, although it can be eaten room temp...but reheating it is simple...just leave it in the can, cover it with a damp towel and put it in the oven for a while.

Here is a link that might be useful: Boston Brown Bread

Cole slaw is a great side dish with lowcountry boil (I actually live in the lowcountry, so we have this dish a lot). Banana pudding makes a great desert with lowcountry boil, too. Lowcountry boil is also called Frogmore Stew or Beaufort Stew.

I had thought about cornbread but the host is a picky eater and he would probably like the crusty bread better.
Hadn't even considered pie or slaw and I love both. Here in Kansas we don't have much opportunity for a low country boil so I am looking forward to it.
Only 7 of us gathering so I will check what others are bringing as well. Last time I overloaded on the side dishes! My mother always did that so no one leaves hungry and there's always some for extra drop ins.
Thanks for the input

And do note Jimster's recipe.

No flour, no sugar.

Yup, that's the real thing. None of that flour-adulterated corn-flavored sweet cake that passes for cornbread in some parts of the country.

To answer mimsic- a low country boil is when you layer seafood, in our case shrimp and crab I believe, potatoes, corn on the cob and sausage chunks along with spices into a pot and let it boil. You have to time things as obviously the potatoes don't cook as fast as the shrimp. You spread it out on the table when it's done on newspaper and foil and have at it.
I am going to try the cornbread recipe. I have a cast iron skillet and have never done cornbread in it. Sounds like a fabulous recipe.

jimster ... are you Southern or do you just appreciate the finer things in live .... that cornbread is SOUTHERN!!!

"... are you Southern or do you just appreciate the finer things in live ...."

It's the latter. Somehow I found out how good Southern cooking can be. For a while now I've been trying to learn as much as I can about it, both how to grow it and how to cook it. My garden has things like cow peas, butter beans, okra, mustard greens and turnip greens in it.

It's not easy for a Northerner to learn these things because there is so much a Southern "just knows" about the food that he or she doesn't realize is totally absent from a Northerner's experience. And much of the basic terminology is different. Peas for example, doesn't mean the same thing in the South that it does in the North. To a Southerner peas means cow peas, crowders, whippoorwill peas and the like, which are actually beans but are never called beans. To a Northerner peas are what Southerners call English peas, a term never used in the North. That's just the beginning.

BTW, the cornbread recipe is from "Butter Beans to Blackberries" by Ronni Lundy.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Butter Beans to Blackberries

Sissyfran: OH :( So I guess to make it kosher I'd have to find a substitute for the shell fish and another for the sausage. Oh well, I guess there's not much point. It does sound like one of those great communal traditions though. Thanks for the definition. -M

For this we would have crusty bread or corn bread but I actually prefer crusty and so does my family. Dip that bread into the juice. Sliced fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, coleslaw and some type of cream pie for dessert.

Even though I posted the corn bread recipe, and a wonderful recipe it is, I have a feeling the crusty baguette would be a better match with the low country boil. Save the corn bread for a meal with Hoppin' John or some such thing. But do make it.

Jim

Okay, I'll go with crusty bread. I do plan to make the cornbread but haven't made my usual trip to the store for stock up yet.
Yes, making it kosher would be the challenge!
I am also making a dessert at the host's request. I just refer to it as the lemon layer dessert. I make it the short cut way with (don't shoot me) whipped topping. Simple shortening, flour and nutty crust topped with cream cheese mixture, lemon pudding and the topping. Lemon is his favorite and since he won't let me contribute with any seafood etc I figure this is the least I can do.
I really want cole slaw too!!