Most of my memories of my childhood revolve around the dinner table. There were six of us in our immediate family but somehow there were always more people at the table. My siblings or myself always had a friend or two over, and if any adult happened to be nearby, they were at the table too. It was common knowledge in our small town that mama cooked and cooked plenty, every night. We had a long farmhouse style table with benches on each side back before farmhouse tables were “the thing”. We would pile in as many as we could at the table to eat mama’s wonderful cooking. It amazes me to this day that she worked full time her entire life, raised four children, never had a housekeeper, never had a microwave when we were growing up, and still managed to cook real home cooked meals every night of the week. I certainly wasn’t able to keep that tradition.
I like to think that old dining table was the tie that bound our family together. I want my children and grandchildren to have those memories and I pray our table becomes “the tie that binds for them”
It is important to me that my children learn some of their Nana’s techniques and recipes while they still can. Mama never cooks from a written recipe. She cooks from sight and texture. When she taught me how to make her special kind of cornbread that you have to touch with your hands to make, she would say, “feel this, that is how you know it’s ready to bake.” I orchestrated a day for the boys to learn how to make mama’s corn pone cornbread, cornbread/chicken dressing, peas, and fried pork chops. I knew I wanted to have pictures so Danny agreed to take the pictures without announcing that he was taking pictures. I gifted Mom, Josh, and Tyler with a book of all the pictures we took that day. My hope is that they treasure it as much as I do this memory.
Nana’s Cornbread
Ingredients
1 bag fine white cornmeal
1 package pork cracklings
1 tsp salt
Instructions
- Heat oven to 425º, generously grease cooking pan
- Combine all cornmeal, salt, cracklings, and water in bowl. Mixture should be consistency of pancake batter. Not too wet, not to dry
- Spoon dough into your hand until you can make a palm size roll in the shape of a large egg.
- Plane cornbread roll onto the baking pan leaving about ¾” between each piece, using three fingers, press the roll down leaving small tunnels.
- Drizzle top of each piece generously with vegetable oil. Bake 20-25 minutes until crispy and brown.
- Serve with your favorite greens such as turnips or peas.
