August 31: Handmade Pie, Appalachian Cornbread, more

The hand that holds the dish made the crust from scratch, and improved the pie recipe, and brought the results to appreciative fans at the August 31 Cornbread Supper. About 25 people inaugurated the school season with dishes made from summer's goodness and lots of home grown and local ingredients.

The little descriptive slips of paper left after the Supper included these tasty bits:

Local tomato, basil, goat cheese, Italian olive oil and balsamic vinegar
Zucchini, onions, basil & sage from the yard
Veggie - green tomato salad
Purple tomato pie
Zucchini quiche
Curry wheatberry salad
Rice pudding with cinnamon [a cup of rice cooked in a quart of local milk for an hour, and then adorned further....yum]
Cam's Appalachian Hot Skillet Cornbread
"What We Had" Cornbread: (in the temporary absence of Weisenberger's White Unbolted Cornmeal): Stonecross bacon, Colonel Newsom's organic country ha, Elmwood Stock Farm eggs, Boyd Orchard corn, Homegrown hot peppers and home-dried tomatoes, yellow cornmeals, one a "roasted" type from a Pennsylvania mill
Beautiful, elegant EXTREMELY local bean seed from a neighbor: a scarlet runner, a purple beauty, and an Asian long - displayed for sharing on the mantel

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Boone Tavern Spoon Bread, the 1950s recipe

We have tried spoonbreads (soft, luscious, buttery—described by James Beard as a "heavy, dense soufflé") as Cornbread Supper mainstays before, and used great recipes, but the spoonbreads always did what spoonbreads (and soufflés) do: deflate. Through serendipity, and thanks to a Cornbread Supperian, I lucked into the old Boone Tavern (Berea College) recipe for spoonbread, and it is far less droopy. Perhaps Boone Tavern developed an approach to spoonbread that preserves all its goodness while still working for a busy restaurant. In any case, with thanks to Kentucky food and foodways author and guru John van Willigen, here's an excellent recipe for that can be doubled, tripled, and quadrupled to feed spoonbread to a crowd. It did just that on Monday, February 25, 2013. From Richard T. Hougen. Look No Further: A cookbook of favorite recipes from Boone Tavern Hotel, Berea College, Kentucky. New York: Abingdon Press. 1955. Southern Spoon Bread 1955 Ingredients 3 c...

We remember Vicky Schankula, 1947–2016

Vicky Schankula, at right, in purple One of life's most gracious and delightful people, Victoria Fairbanks Schankula, found Cornbread Suppers early on, and took joy in the weekly gatherings. She came to Cornbread Supper faithfully, bringing beautiful food, laughter, a camera for her "picture of the day," a lovely British accent, a commitment to helping clean up, and a constant interest in each other person in the room. When Vicky entered the house on Monday nights carrying a particular large round plate, children (and a few adults) trailed her to the dessert table to see what she had brought. The favorites: lemon bars, brownies and her mother's most unusual, delicious carrot cake. Vicky graciously shared and allowed us to publish recipes for Lemon Bars and Isabel Fairbairns's (Gangy's) Carrot Cake on this site. Gangy's Carrot Cake on Vicky Schankula's special dessert plate When illness prevented Vicky from returning to Cornbread Supper...

Cornbread Supper now is resting

For all the Cornbreadians and would-be Cornbreadians -- it was a good run. A bit more than nine years. You came on Mondays. Conviviality ensued. You made community. Gratitude to all. It was a gift to us.

Cornbread Supper

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