[Sca-cooks] Cornbread and milk

[Pat]

Maire profaned thusly:
>--maire, who knows a guy who crumbles up his 
>cornbread and puts it in a 
>bowl and puts milk on top of it....<<shudder>>
 
Hey, now!
In the very deep South, when I was growing up, dinner was the large meal you ate in the middle of the day.  Supper was the light meal you ate at the end of the day.  For the sixty four years my grandparents were together, they had cornbread and milk for supper at least four days a week.  When I lived with them, or visited, I did too.  For me, hot cornbread crumbled into a large mug with ice cold fresh milk poured over it is comfort food. 
The cornbread must have no sugar or peppers or whole kernel corn, but some cracklins are necessary, and it must be made with buttermilk and yellow corn meal.  It can be fried in small cakes in a cast iron frying pan on top of the stove, but best is baked.
For those barbarians who don't know, cracklins are what are left in the lard press after one makes lard.  Fried pigskins from the convience store are not even in the same galaxy for flavor.
The way my grandparents ate it, this dish is a walking heart attack.  The cornbread is made with a lot of lard, and the cracklins.  And it's either pan fried in lard, or baked in a pan seasoned with lard.  The fresh whole milk was closer to 8% butterfat than the insipid 4% sold in American groceries as "whole" milk.   BTW my grandparents died in their eighties within a month of each other.  Big Mama's cooking probably led to their early demise.
Like I said, it's great stuff.
 
Mordonna



Pat Griffin
Lady Anne du Bosc
known as Mordonna the Cook
Shire of Thorngill, Meridies
Mundanely, Millbrook, AL