According to my parentheticals, this columnist is still in a state of mourning. Yes, Carolyn Virginia Nelson, a personal icon of Black Belt cuisine, is no longer with us. I have been cooking my way through it. I never got to sit at her table, so for personal stories you’ll have to ask the folks who did. It’s possible our paths crossed more than once in the small world of Marengo County, but it’s hard to say. When I found out last year she had a cookbook available at Lindsay’s in Demopolis, my friend Kendall set out to get me a signed copy. It’s inscribed with a simple “Have fun cooking!” What fun, indeed.
My mother used to have a copy of an adorable cookbook, Kissin’ Wears Out, But Cookin’ Don’t, which I’ve always believed holds some of Carolyn Nelson’s earliest recipes. Many a weeknight recipe came from this very cookbook, and I came to think of my mother the way Liza Minnelli described hers: a great short-order cook. All the labor-intensive recipes I adore making represent a yoke I willingly put on my own shoulders. As a young cook I turned my nose up at casseroles, at cake mix dyed red, at shortcuts of any kind, and got the foolish notion that if you don’t toil for your food, you’re spoiled by convenience. I’ve since come back to the foods I once knew so well and gained a real appreciation for these simpler, heartier recipes. As it turns out, I share quite a lot of kin with Nelson: her aunt, Grace Tucker, was my sainted great-grandmother. I know this from the dedication at the front of this column’s much-cited Memaw’s Southern Cookin’, where Grace’s name appears among the cooks who influenced Nelson and her cooking. One thing the Tuckers can do is make enough food for the southern part of the county.
I’d be lying to you if I said I had a mourning wreath out, a closet full of somber linens, but I just can’t abide that. At my mother’s funeral, I wore the last outfit she picked out for me: a white-and-gray striped polo, khaki-colored cargo shorts, and black Converse. Hearing about the preparations for Dolly Parton’s funeral, I was struck by her request to be placed in a bed of plush cotton, so that she can finally rest. I like to think I’ve got a strong constitution, and maybe it’s just all the recent deaths compounding, but I got a little teary-eyed at that. Sure, I’d love a world where Dolly is always coming out with new baking mixes and Carolyn comes out with a new cookbook every year. Yet I stop and think, “You know, after all this, rest is all I can really ask for.”
Mary Oliver put it more poetically when she wrote about how everything eventually meets its end, too soon, and asked what one plans to do with their one wild and precious life. Really, though, what do I plan to do? Cooking has been a buoy, a refuge, if you will. It makes sense; it gives me some much-needed order. In so many ways, this hasn’t changed since I was a kid. Granted, my culinary contributions were much dicier then, though not entirely unwelcome. Still, I have a persistent streak despite all my polite wrapping. Through my mourning, I’ve dusted off the Crock-Pot for peach-soaked chicken, put the tiniest jar of diced pimientos into my collards, baked pork chops in a bath of ginger ale and ketchup. Yet all I can think about is cornbread. Somewhere along the way, I’ve told y’all about my preferred last meal (a Nick’s barbecue plate, if you need a refresher). However, I could settle for just a skillet of sweet cornbread and a tall glass of milk. The country version of cold cereal, as far as I’m concerned. This brings me to my favorite recipe from Memaw’s Southern Cookin’, the one I could make for the rest of my life, until I finally get some rest…
Buttery Corn Bread
2/3 cup butter, softened 1 cup sugar 3 large eggs 1 2/3 cups milk 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, sifted prior to measuring 1 cup cornmeal, home-ground if possible 4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light. Whisk together the eggs and milk. Combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt. Alternately add the flour mixture and the egg-milk mixture to the creamed mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Pour into a greased 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cut into squares. Serve warm. Serves 12.
Carolyn herself allows in the headnote that this is more like cake. Fine by me. You may also be ready to point out that “true” Southern cornbread doesn’t have sugar in it. I don’t care. Also, I’m of the opinion that this distinction between Yankee cornbread and Southern cornbread is a bunch of fiddle-faddle. Seriously, though, you mean to tell me the South, renowned for cakes and other sweet confections, couldn’t possibly have sprinkled some sugar in its cornbread in all the years it’s been the South? Fiddle-dee-dee! We’ll do anything to remind folks we ain’t up North down here!
Anyway, now that I’m off that high horse, I’m here to tell you this is the best cornbread I’ve ever put in my mouth. It’s delicate, perfect with barbecue or with a scoop of ice cream, moist, structured. To me, that’s the value of sugar in cornbread, not the sweetness, but the structure. I’ve handed this recipe to a number of friends who were in the market for one I’d stand behind. My grandmother used to tease me for my love of Jiffy mix cornbread, but you tell me a tastier value than a box of sweet cornbread for less than a dollar. Besides, if you want to plant your flag on the savory cornbread hill, be my guest. More sweet cornbread for the rest of us who don’t mind.
I don’t mean to be so biting; it’s just the grief talking through me. Anyway, it’s only right that I sign off with a bit of gratitude. Besides, I’m not much of an obituary writer, though I’ve transcribed a good many of them in my day. In fact, a woman used to come to the Watchman office every Friday like clockwork wanting every funeral program we’d run that week. My grandparents and countless other folks their age seemed to talk only about who had died. I used to dread it; now I understand it. We all have our own ways of dealing with the dizzying passage of time.
In that inscription I mentioned earlier, Nelson also included a Bible verse, Romans 8:28, about how God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. When I’m out in the morning, watching the birds wake up, the sun climbing higher, I get overwhelmed every time. It’s like this big hand comes over my face and fills me with new breath, or like plunging into a cold stream.
I’m learning to be more idle, to pay attention, to watch life’s unfolding. Maybe it’s not praying, but it feels like praying when you walk through a field alone with the birds. I’m glad to know y’all through this column, and if a stranger ever thinks of it the way I think of Carolyn Nelson’s cookbook, that’s honor enough. For the longest, I thought being known was what would make me full. Sure, eating all this Southern cooking fills me up, but it’s with the birds that I’m at my fullest. I like to think about Carolyn or Dolly or my mother, donning a pair of wings and flying off just past me, to something greater.
Carolyn Nelson, 86, of Demopolis, died Aug. 16.
