Back in my day, you put a pone of bread on the table and passed it around for everybody to break ’em off a piece. I can remember we’d be working in the fields and we’d get tired and hungry in the afternoon, we’d go by the garden and get us some onions and Mama’d get some glasses and some corn bread and we’d go down to the spring, pour us out some buttermilk, and eat corn bread and buttermilk and onions for our evening snack. It was good, right there at the spring. Take a spoon to stir it up. That was a good snack.
—Hazel Farmer, Upper Young Cane community near Blairsville, Georgia “Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine” by Joseph E. Dabney
Pap and Granny loved to eat cornbread and milk for an evening snack. Granny still does. She likes it with buttermilk like Hazel and her family.
When I was growing up we always had bread at our meals. It was either cornbread or biscuits. In those days I was most pleased when it was biscuits, but today I’d be hard pressed to say whether I prefer biscuits or cornbread.
I’ve heard The Deer Hunter and his family talk about his grandmother Lura’s cornbread. As shared in the excerpt above she never sliced the cornbread. Everyone just broke off a hunk.
I know well the work it takes to grow corn, gather it, and mill it for cornmeal—even though there’s a tremendous amount of work I sure wish I had a place to grow corn for making my own meal.
Last night’s video: Cleaning up Construction Mess & Spreading the Last of the Lime.
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Hi y’all I live on the west coast so maybe that’s why I never became much of a corn bread eater, however my mom made the best yeast bread in the world! To this day when I smell fresh baked bread and sit down to the dinner table to eat homemade bread, pinto beans (or lima) and fried potatoes I feel my childhood rise within me. I feel loved and cared for because my Mother put a whole passel of love in the food she cooked. My mother passed away in 2016 and I miss her. When I have anyone over to the house I do my best to follow her example and serve my guests a big slice of love with any meal I prepare. God bless.
p.s. I found this site when I looked up the word “clabber” after reading it in a book by Catherine Marshall called ” Christy” about a girl who goes to live in the Appalachian Mountains to become a “person worth something ” as she told Miss Alice, the old Quaker women who was a missionary to the mountain people of the Appalachian.
Hi y’all!! Love your videos and words here as well. I grew up on cornbread and milk. Still eat it regularly to this day. Nothing like it. I live in Ohio now, and anyone, including my husband when we first met, had never heard of cornbread and milk. They didn’t like the sounds of it, until they actually tried it. Love seeing this post. It still brings me back to my childhood. Keep up the great work you’re doing. Love KiminOhio.
Karen, would you be willing to share your mother’s recipe for her homemade yeast bread?
My great-grandmother and great-grandfather always had cornbread and milk for supper. She used yellow cornmeal for her cornbread and I loved to eat with then when I was quite young. The color of the cornbread appealed to me as my mother used white cornmeal. I feel fortunate to have this memory as they were born in 1862 and 1863 and I am now 87 years old.
I just polished off a glass full of cornbread and milk. I could founder on the stuff!
We had cornbread every night just passed around the table and broken off individually. What was left over was put in the oven for milk and bread the next day. There was always something to eat if that was in the oven. I can remember coming in from partying in Asheville and eating cornbread and milk with onions. Delicious, and helped with rising for church the next day!
We were raised kn Cornbread and cows milk. Sometimes we would eat it with milk or butter milk. I love getting me an onion and a piece of Cornbread and eat it just like that. Nothing beats soupbeans and Cornbread and onion. That’s my favorite and always will be.
I never thought about the cornbread and milk ( sounds delicious) but one of my favorite treats as a young girl was putting milk over saltine crackers. My grandmother and I would eat this snack quite often.
I love cornbread and buttermilk!
My Mommy loved cornbread so much I believe we had it with every meal except breakfast and even then sometimes she would make meal gravy. Thank God for biscuits and gravy! 🙂 My Daddy’s favorite was biscuits. I remember Mommy eating cornbread and milk.
Happy Birthday to all those with birthdays this month. My husband and I celebrated our 28th anniversary on the 5th and our son’s 27th birthday was the 8th. We’ve got a lot of family and friends 25th birthdays thus month too. February is a busy month for us. 🙂
Charles and I love cornbread. Charles makes it like his
Granny Patterson made hers and it is so good. The secret is
baking it in a cast iron frying pan so it will have a hard
crust on it. Be sure the frying pan is well-greased and is hot
when you pour in the bread batter We love hot cornbread
with butter and onions.
When I was growing up we would eat cornbread and onions
mixed in a glass of milk. Now that’s some good eating!
Kathy Patterson
Kathy Patterson
I love cornbread! We all have our ways of fixing it that is for sure. I like to make mine thin. I don’t care for it sweet, and I like to break it apart. I like biscuits but if I had to choose, cornbread is my first choice. Have a great rest of the day everyone!!
Everybody talking about cornbread and buttermilk, cornbread and soup beans, got me raving hungry. My favorite snack growing up was a piece of cornbread warming in the cabinet on top our wood-burning cookstove. Good days and good food for sure. Thanks for poking my memories
Tipper, I live in North Georgia, and there is a small water wheel mill right down the road. They only ground organic corn and sell the mill “as is.” No flour or additives of any kind. Most of the corn meal sold in grocery stores have wheat flour along with salt and baking powder. THAT is not old fashioned corn meal although I have cooked my share of that mix. Real corn bread is ground corn, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. Some people put in an egg, but we never did. Cooking it in a skillet with lots of lard added flavor and kept it from being too dry. All my older relatives dipped snuff, and we always had dozens of those heavy short glasses. I don’t think buttermilk and cornbread would taste quite right if it wasn’t eaten out of one.
I make my cornbread without wheat flour, not because I have a problem with flour but because I like the cornier flavor. Pure corn cornbread is denser than that made with flour because the gluten in the flour helps it rise and hold its volume. Adding an egg (or even two if they are small) helps the cornbread rise and stay risen if you whip some air into it before adding it to the batter.
I put a tablespoon of butter into the mix also. That along with the egg yolk and the yellow corn meal I use produces a yellow cake of cornbread.
I have found a source for local stone ground yellow corn meal. I add my own salt, baking powder, baking soda and buttermilk.
I love the taste of my cornbread but I guess I’m the only one who does. Nobody else will even try it. That’s fine! I offered! I give up easy.
Brenda,
My mother would buy what she called “snuff glasses” from
SunnySide store near Fancy Gap, Va. That was our milk glasses.
None of my family dipped snuff but they chewed tobacco.
Did you folks serve cornbread with butter?
Isn’t it something that your family and mine family drank milk
from the same size and type of glasses.
Kathy Patteson
I never heard cornbread called a “pone” until I was way up in years. I may have heard it from my cousin Bill Burnett or maybe it was here. We never made cornbread in a skillet before then. We always used a 9″ X 13″ cake pan or something similar. Both my wife’s and my family made cornbread in a rectangular pan. The corners of cornbread are the best part. Cornbread made in a skillet has no corners.
I remember in math class at school when we learn to figure the circumference of a circle πR² (pie are square) we would say “no cornbread are square, pie are round”!
The way I look at it cornbread is a cake not a bread. You make a batter when you make cornbread. You make a dough to make bread. Biscuits are made from a dough therefore they a bread. When Marie Antoinette said “let them eat cake” maybe she meant cornbread.
Ed,
Corn pones are like cat head biscuits.
All of great to eat. They just don’t look
as neat as biscuits are cut into round shapes
or Corn bread that is the shape of the pan
it was baked in.
I love Cornbread and buttermilk. My mother use to tell me, I stood with my little tin cup waiting on her to finish churning so she could fill up my cup with the fresh buttermilk. I loved it with little chunks of butter in it with hot cornbread. We still have that combination for supper sometimes, with an onion.
Cornbread a buttermilk! That is my favorite go to snack.
We grew up with homemade bread at every meal and cornbread to snack on. Also, we generally had a cooked breakfast, and still today I cannot eat cereal for breakfast. Cereal has become an evening snack. The only cereal I remember having was oatmeal and corn flakes. Repetition has caused me not to care for certain foods. Maybe jelly being my least favorite. However, that same repetition has made me forever love other foods such as cornbread, biscuits, potatoes, and any kind of beans. I have friends who would not touch a bean to eat nor will they garden. I worked very hard along with my Mom in huge gardens, and loved every second of it. They said they had enough of that growing up. I guess I can relate as some foods I shun, but others are my favorite. I had not cooked cabbage in a while. I cooked cabbage this week, and it tasted so good I wondered why I waited so long. Can’t wait to see all your gardening and cooking coming up.
Mmmmm mmm love cornbread and milk! Sweet, or butter. Lots of times that’s what our daddy wanted for supper. Brings up good memories. I also love soda crackers and sweet milk! I had that for supper night before last.
Happy Birthday to you February babies! Mine is this week too! 58 years young! Where has the time gone. My daddy always said 29 and holding until us kids was older than that. Lol
Debbie- Happy Birthday to you too!
I love cornbread and milk but I don’t eat it much any more. It strangles me! It always has to some degree but since I got old it’s a lot worse. I can eat dry cornbread and drink milk just fine but put them together any more and I have to be really careful.
Here lately I eat my cornbread covered with soup beans. I often add chopped onions, cheese or hot sauce. Or all three!
Whoever said sugar shouldn’t be in cornbread is absolutely right! There ought to be a law against it! The only time sugar and corn should come in contact with each other is in sour mash but there is already a law against that!
My Daddy said he couldn’t understand why my mother couldn’t make cornbread as good as his aunt who raised him. I bought a tractor-powered mill and ground some Hickory King corn and he said he understood now. The meal was the difference. Unfortunately, my bull damaged the mill and we can’t grow corn for the racoons, so it has been a while since we had good meal. Sometimes the Mennonite farmer’s market near us has some that they say is home-ground Hickory King, but it doesn’t seem as good. I guess we will just get by with Martha White self rising.
My grandpa use to fix this and id sit in the swing with him on the porch. Hed have his in buttermilk and id have milk .
Seems like I recall you saying pap had a garden n grew corn down below or near their place. Is it still there where you could grow some?
Sandra-the big garden was actually part of my brother’s land after Pap gave it to him and he planted an orchard on it after Pap died. He shares his bounty with granny and me
There will be cornbread and biscuits in Heaven!!
Cornbread brings so many memories with it. Mama and her cornbread and buttermilk. She always made a pone in a cast iron skillet unlike my wife who only makes cornbread muffins. Corn bread crumbled and mixed with honey is as good as a biscuit and honey and maybe better.
When you mentioned breaking the bread it brought back memories of a story I was told 40 years ago of the Yankee who sat down at the Southern table and proceeded to cut a slice of cornbread. The woman got up threw the cornbread out and then made a new mix. She told him the Bible said break break bread and nothing about cutting it. I am sure it is al fiction and do not think any true Southerner would embarrass a guest in their house that way, but you do have to believe that their is truth in the statement of breaking bread.
Even in India the bread is broken not cut when eating. The naan was set on the table and pieces torn to reach into the bowl to get the food. There were no plates.
When I was a child we always broke off a piece of cornbread. Eventually Mama started cutting it up like pie. That way everybody got a piece with some outside crust on it. Like you I don’t think we’d throw a whole pone out. Leftovers were frozen & saved to make dressing.
I love honey on cornbread or jelly or syrup. Also love leftover cornbread with slice of onion and tomato.
My father always loved cornbread and buttermilk. I never developed a taste for it, but I do love good homemade cornbread and biscuits.
When I was growing up, we had cornbread for supper about 365 days a year. I still use the iron skillet mom made the cornbread in. I make my bread a little thinner than she did and only make it about two or three times a month. Vegetable soup and soup beans wouldn’t be worth eating without a pone of cornbread to crumble in the bowl.
My mommy was a big cornbread and buttermilk eater! As a kid, that was her snack while I feasted on chips or tomato soup. Once I grabbed a big gulp of buttermilk cause I was thirsty and it was hot. I mistook it for sweet milk and boy did I ever get instantly sick! Since that day buttermilk only goes into cakes, breads etc cause I can’t stand it! Lol. I’d eat a big bowl of pintos with cornbread, tomatoes and onions! It’s one of my favorite meals! Can’t you just picture a hot bunch of working family eating a bowl of cool buttermilk and cornbread sitting together dangling their tootsies in the creek? I bet there was laughing and joy in a very simple rest and snack. BTW if you don’t have a place for corn- check over at Granny’s, Chatter’s, Paul’s or Cindy’s. Somebody has a spare patch of workable ground. Where there’s a will there’s a way. I seldom take no for an answer…. I’m a survivor and fighter especially when it comes to food…. Lol
Sadie, mine and my wife’s parents and grandparents all grew up on farms, all but one grandparent on sharecropper farms. I have often heard them say they would eat a big breakfast and dinner and eat a “light” supper of cornbread and milk- most often buttermilk at night. I never heard anyone say anything about a creek or spring only sometimes eating while sitting under a big shade tree.
Same. I’d have starved to death if it wasn’t for cornbread and buttermilk growing up. I too have my grandmothers Wagner cast iron skillet for cornbread. And now that I have a wood cookstove mine is almost as good as I remember hers being. Except she used home grown and stone ground meal. But I’m as close as I can get.
I’m crazy for biscuits or cornbread. I just love em both. But I can’t bring myself to like cornbread and any milk. Just can’t. We had a pone of cornbread or a plate of biscuits at ever meal when I was a girl and I’ve done this with my family too. Miss Tipper, I can’t wait to see what y’all do with your new spots to garden. They are lookin nice already. Have a blessed week everyone!
My dad always put cornbread in buttermilk to eat when my mom made cornbread. He always said it was the best treat. I like cornbread, but prefer mine in brown beans or with butter. I’ve never cared to drink buttermilk, but my mother in-law does, but she just likes to drink it.
On my weekend foray onto back roads years ago I picked up the book, “Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine” by Joseph E. Dabney. I read it through twice because it reminded me of hearing my mama and daddy tell of how they grew up and ways of rewarding living that I forgot. Long story short, being recently widowed it didn’t take me long to move to north Georgia. I would have gone further up into the mountains, but considering my birthdays were coming faster and faster, I limited myself to being no further away than an hour from my grandchildren. I found some acreage and plopped right in the middle of it. All because of a book and I have never regretted it. And my dad’s favorite snack was cornbread and milk in a glass. If there was no cornbread, he substituted saltine crackers.
I was born and raised in the north. My Dad was from Missouri. I grew up eating cornbread. I still like a bowl of cornbread and milk for supper or breakfast. Manna from Heaven.
Wishing you and asking for you a blessed birthday, Randy.
There is a company in Ohio named “Our Father’s Bread” that sells crushed grain instead of ground. They have corn, wheat and other grains in various textures. I’d like to try some cornbread made with the crushed corn. I wonder how it would compare with the old stone ground mills. I expect they varied somewhat in the fondness of their ‘grind’ (or was that more of a ‘crush’?)
Anyway, if I get to where there is no cornbread I’m a stranger in a strange land.
We visited the Lodge cast iron factory and outlet store in South Pittsburg, Tn yesterday. So many cast iron cookware. The town has annual Corn Bread Festival in April which we may attend. The small town was founded in 1873
Sometimes I’d rather have cornbread, buttermilk, and onions than a steak. My daddy always salt and peppered his buttermilk and so do I ( with or without cornbread).
My wife likes hers with sweetmilk.
I am a new subscriber and really enjoy your site.
When I was growing up, Mama made cornbread in a pone too. We broke it off instead of slicing. We’d have it as a snack in buttermilk or sweet milk.
She said that one time when she was little, her mother had made a one layer plain yellow cake with no icing. She had put it on the table but hadn’t sliced it yet. Her daddy came in and broke himself off a big piece and was embarrassed when he saw that it was cake!
I do fix cornbread very often and I am trying to perfect biscuits…that one is a bugger. good ole cold buttermilk with either is awesome. Some time back you visited the mill where to purchase fresh ground corn meal. I seem to be holding on to that cornmeal for ‘special’ meals and use ‘store bought’ meal for the rest of the time. I am savoring it and will probably need to buy some again soon, Work is really moving along getting ready for the garden and you guys make me tired watching you. We are readying an area for our spring one and gosh it is a lot of work for us elder ones. Have a Bless day and please tell Ganny hello.
I am a little reluctant to admit this, but I never much liked cornbread and biscuits. I could eat it some but not too much. I actually don’t eat much bread of any kind. I’ve just never liked it.
Miss Cindy, my granddaughter doesn’t really like any type of bread very much. She’s been that way since she was a toddler. If she orders a burger out she only eats the meat with cheese. We tell her she can order the burger without bread, but like you, she doesn’t want people knowing she doesn’t like bread. Once in a very great while she will eat the inside of a bun, but only a bit or two. She says she just doesn’t like the texture of bread, any bread. She doesn’t like any condiments either. No mayonnaise, no mustard or no ketchup.
Sometimes cornbread and buttermilk was our supper.
I agree, Tipper, it’s hard to choose between biscuits and cornbread. Sometimes I have to have both on the table, as our son prefers biscuits. Cornbread and milk is so delicious, as is a fresh biscuit with honey butter!
Cornbread and sweet milk is one of my favorite things to eat. Very seldom do I eat a meal that includes cornbread without finishing up with a small bowl of cornbread and milk for my dessert. I have never been able to get a taste for buttermilk and my daddy never liked sweet milk. My wife could make some of the best cornbread I have ever ate. I do not like sweet cornbread, it is to much like cake.
Something happen to me during the night, I woke up a year older this morning! Mother never failed to tell me about the gosh awful thunderstorms at Anderson, SC on my birthday. All daddy talked about was how he couldn’t figure out how the old country doctor at Belton was able to beat the ambulance to the hospital at Anderson during the storms. Both left Belton at the same time. That was 69 years ago. It seems like just yesterday I was a kid. Where does the time go?
Randy-Happy Happy Birthday 🙂
My husband is 92 years young today! Got a dog that is what he wanted I hope he is happy with her.Happy Birthday Ken !!!!! I am a milk and corn bread eater , love that stuff. have a great Day all. GOD BLESS !
My wife and I never made big deals out of our birthdays. When the dog we have now (half Walker hound and half Labrador) was about 8-10 months he had to have surgery on his intestines because he swallowed some strings and whistle from a stuffed toy. It was touch and go fo awhile as to where he was going to make it. My wife loved this dog and the dog loved her. He grieved for several weeks when she died. After this surgery, she bought the dog a cupcake and gave it to the dog on his birthday and didn’t give me one on my birthday. I sure did tease her and give her a hard time about that, and tell her I see who you love the best. She would give me that little grin of hers. She gave me and the dog a cupcake on our next birthdays! Lord how I miss her.
Sue- please tell him Happy Birthday for me!
Happy Birthday Randy! Mine was yesterday and husband’s is next Sunday. I was always told when I was born there was a snow on the ground. I turned 65 and my husband will be 67. We were also taking about where in the world has time gone. Blessed to be able to have another one too.