“My favorite meal is beans, fried taters, maters, a slice of onion and a big slice of cornbread with butter.”
I grew up on that and pork from two slaughtered pigs a year. Dad had a smoke house where the bacon and hams hung.
About cornbread, we had it at every meal except breakfast. I remember going to eat lunch with a girlfriend after Sunday church one time, and they had light bread (that’s what we called regular sliced bread from the grocery) with lunch and I was stunned - why would anyone want that stuff for lunch and where was the cornbread? Took a while for me to reaize other people didn’t have cornbread for every meal.
When I stayed at Granny’s we had homemade bread or biscuits with every meal. Cornbread was a treat. We made the bread on Saturday, enough for the week.
After it cooled, we wrapped it in T-Towels (made out of flour sacks) and put it in the water bath canner with the lid on. Sliced it as needed.
Favorite snack then, was to take some homemade molasses and add it to some homemade butter, then spread it on the homemade bread or toast. Wash it down with a glass of cold raw milk which was from one of the cows we milked by hand.
My parents baked cornbread most every day for the noon lunch crowd at the cafe. Trouble was it was almost always gone by the time I got out of school. LOL.
Still, I managed to get lots of cornbread and beans. One of my girlfriends had beans, taters, and cornbread every night for supper. Lots of times I would go home with her after school, and we put on the beans for supper, and peeled potatoes.
Naturally her mom would ask if I wanted to stay for supper, after being so helpful and all. She would always say we’re just having beans, taters, and cornbread. I was estatic. Then I would call and ask my parents if I could stay a little longer, and wow there you go a great meal!LOL
This recipe is for a 6" cast iron skillet. 4 servings.
3/4 cup of fresh ground corn (fine grind, if using a Corona mill, grind 3 times) 3/4 cup of wheat flour. 2 Tbsp buttermilk powder 2 Tbsp whole milk powder 3/4 teaspoon of risings (Baking powder) 1/2 teaspoon of salt 2 Tbsp whole egg powder 3 Tbsp of lardPreheat oven to 400F and place skillet with lard in oven to preheat skillet and melt lard.
Optional: 1 tsp of sugar
Mix dry ingredients well, add water to make a batter.
When lard is melted, and skillet is hot, pour excess lard into the batter, mix quickly and pour into skillet. Bake until top is light brown and toothpick comes out clean.
That's my version, anyway. It's pretty good, IMHO.
/johnny