Cornbread & Corn Pones
Mom playing guitar at our family reunion on Conesus Lake, NY in 1979.
Mom “mildly protesting” the Bo Diddley Concert at Duke with her folksinging group. Funny because I think she actually really liked Bo Diddley.
Dad in his ever present 1970s/1980s cutoffs. He would only go to pools that would allow him to wear cutoffs instead of swim trunks. The NC Faculty Club Pool was problematic as I rememeber. Dad is photographed on the right with his father and brothers Bill and Michael. I think that Dad wore the Bob Jones University shirt on the right just to be controversial. (It’s a conservative Evangelical school in South Carolina.)
That one time Dad took me fishing at Lake Hiko. By the look on my face, I’m not so sure about it. Our lake place was named after Loretta Lynn’s home, Butcher Holler. (Dad called it Holler’s Butcher or something like that. My memory is failing me.)
Family sing along in my grandparents living room in Kingsport, TN. I have no idea who the person is on the right, or if they enjoyed hearing us sing! Ha Ha.
Mom on our front porch with her mountain dulcimer, a gift from my Dad.
I’m back from West Texas and I just accepted an invitation to a girls’ weekend at the VERY PINK Dolly Parton-themed hotel, The Graduate, in Nashville. I’m psyched! This has gotten me thinking about my childhood and all of the music that I was exposed to. I’ve mentioned Mom’s classical music expertise and Dad’s 1960s radio DJing, but I don’t think I’ve gotten much into the other genres that played in my house. Despite my recent highfalutin post, it was not “all Queen Mary 2 all the time” in our family. There was definitely a good mix of other cultures at play. When I was little my sister and I would receive records for our birthdays (either Dolly Parton or Linda Ronstadt) along with that solo wheel of brie (pretty damn good presents if you ask me now!). We used to religiously watch Hee Haw, The Mandrell Sisters Show, Sha Na Na, and the Dolly Parton Show. Dolly used to close each episode by singing “I Will Always Love You” on a butterfly decorated swing. That song still makes me cry every time. Dolly runs deep in my family. My aunt, a gospel music enthusiast, bought a season pass to Dollywood just to be able to hear the music. And, once, my sister ran out of gas on a deserted stretch of highway on the West Coast because she was so wrapped up in Dolly’s book on tape bio that she didn’t notice the empty gas light.
Being from the mountains of East Tennessee (well, I’m from Chapel Hill but both of my parents are from Kingsport), this music just speaks to my family. My aunt, Lisa Alther, has written a lot about Appalachia and, more specifically, the Melungeons. That’s a post for another day, but there’s definitely something Southern and mountain-y in my blood. I must confess that I spent more than a few of my goth-tastic years avoiding it, but it remained there nonetheless. I mean, I grew up with a school sponsored “Hillbilly Day” in Elementary School. We would black out our teeth, wear tattered clothing, and square dance. (Hey, it was the 70s.) When I was little we would drive over to the Carter Family Fold in Southwestern Virginia when visiting my grandparents (yes, *that* Carter family, of June & Johnny Cash fame). It was a lean-to in the woods with a rotating cast of family members on stage (essentially whoever was in town) and a whole lot of clogging. Yup, clogging! As a kid, I was not intimidated, I would just run down to the dancefloor and go to town, mimicking the regulars. When I was older and I brought Chris home to meet my grandparents, my aunt took us to the fold and we were a little more reserved. That is, until they asked if anyone was from out of state and someone pointed at us. We were singled out to “come on down!” to show our stuff. Awkward. But, we gave it the old college try. I had on rubber soled shoes and was never the same. Back home in Houston, I wound up at an orthopedic surgeon’s office complaining about my knees. When he asked what I had been up to, I had to confess, “clogging in rubber soled shoes”. He said, “Well, that’s a first”.
I grew up with mountain and folk music around me. Mom and Dad would go to a shape note singing group up at UNC on Sunday afternoons. I hated it. I would roll around on the floor waiting for it to end. Mom had a dulcimer that she would get down from time to time and, later in life, she purchased an autoharp from the inventory of the infamous Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee (where Elvis and practically everyone else of note recorded!). We like to think that it was used on some recording session by Maybelle Carter. Who knows?! As I mentioned in my post about our friend, the musician Tommy Edwards, bluegrass music was literally everywhere when I was a kid. So, I come by Dolly naturally. If you aren’t yet a fan, I highly recommend that you listen to the podcast “Dolly Parton’s America”. Although Dad proclaims it to be “too woke”, I thought it was fantastic and kinda life changing.
So, for today’s recipe? Let’s go with some delicious down home cornbread. I found a sweet note that Mom wrote to my sister about cornbread when she had to quit gluten. I’ll include it.
“It occurs to me that your not being able to eat wheat means you should try embracing your Southern heritage. Wheat flour was expensive – couldn’t be grown here – so people ate cornbreads without any wheat flour in them. They’re easy and surprisingly good.”
SOUR MILK CORNBREAD
1 ½ cups fine-ground white cornmeal
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking powder [you can make your own, with ¼ c. cream of tartar and 2 Tbsp. baking soda
1 ¾ cups soured milk or buttermilk [don’t use milk that’s gone bad. Sour your own in 10 minutes: 1 ¾ cups sweet milk and 2 tsp. lemon juice and 2 tsp cider vinegar—or just use vinegar if you’re desperate.
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbsp unsalted butter.
Preheat oven to 450
Mix dry ingredients. Stir milk into beaten eggs. Combine to make a smooth batter.
Cut butter in pieces, but in 10” iron skillet and put in oven. When butter is foaming, take it out, swirl it around to grease pan, pour excess into batter and stir. Dump batter in pan. Bake 30-40 min.
STOVETOP SKILLET CORNBREAD
1 ¾ cups fine-ground white cornmeal
1 ¼ tsp salt
1-2 cups boiling water
2 tbsp bacon fat or butter.
Mix cornmeal and salt. Slowly stir in 1 cup of boiling water,mixing well. Blend enough to get the texture of mashed potatoes. Cool 5 min or so.
Generously butter a 10” skillet. Wet your hands with cold water and pat the batter into the skillet, filling the entire bottom. Cook over medium-low heat until crispyon bottom [about 15 min], dump on a plate and slide back in skillet to cook other side [about 5-10 minutes]
FRIED CORN PONES
1 ½ cups stone-ground white cornmeal
¾ tsp salt
¾ cup or more boiling water [ you may need a good bit more]
Oil for frying. Or butter or whatever.
Mix salt and cornmeal. Stir in boiling water until it feels like mashed potatoes. You can let it cool a bit and make little cakes in your dampened hands – rather thin – or you can put by spoonfuls in the hot pan and pat them flat. Cook both sides till done.
CORN PANCAKES
1 cup white cornmeal
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2/3 – 1 cup milk, at room temp
1 tbsp melted butter.
Mix try ingredients. In another bowl, beat eggs lightly and stir in milk. Stir liquid into dry ingreds. Add melted butter and stir.
Cook as usual.
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