Hoe Cake

[muzzlediscipline]

Johnny cakes were a familiar thing in New England when I was a kid. Everyone had their own recipe but it was never sweet and mostly kinda hard. Corn bread up here was a recognized southern thing and could be sweetened. Later living in Ohio "Beans and cornbread" were a frequent dinner lunch. Living in Tulsa it was fry bread basically Johnny cakes fried in a skillet with lots of pork fat preferably bacon grease with enough left over to fry the greens.

 

[Notchy Bob]

Johnny cakes were a familiar thing in New England when I was a kid. Everyone had their own recipe but it was never sweet and mostly kinda hard. Corn bread up here was a recognized southern thing and could be sweetened. Later living in Ohio "Beans and cornbread" were a frequent dinner lunch. Living in Tulsa it was fry bread basically Johnny cakes fried in a skillet with lots of pork fat preferably bacon grease with enough left over to fry the greens.

Frybread! Yum!

I think of fry bread as a native thing, and made with wheat flour. I've had Seminole pumpkin bread here in Florida, which is essentially frybread with pumpkin in it (and it's really good), but the only decent regular frybread I've ever had was served west of the Mississippi. I hiked down into Havasu Gorge in 1975 and lived for two days on frybread and pinto beans served in a little diner down there. I loved every minute of that experience, and especially the chow. I also spent a few days in the vicinity of Hardin, Montana in 2006, and ate several times at a restaurant run by a Crow family near the national monument. Their Indian Taco was an enormous piece of fry read topped with pinto beans, lettuce, and a few other odds and ends. I don't think I ordered anything else any time I went there.

Thanks for the memories!

Notchy Bob

 

[tenngun]

I'm the odd man out here. I never learned to like cornbread, pone, johnny cakes, etc. We never had any of that at home when I was growing up even when we lived in southern states.

Corn bread remains my treat. When my wife will eat corn bread she wants Jiffy brand corn bread.
Prefers flour tortillas to corn and for her I make white corn tortillas if I’m making enchiladas.
She will go to see my step children at times, twice a year she will be gone a week or so. So I’m known to make mush or tamales while she’s gone.

 

[kje54]

Corn bread remains my treat. When my wife will eat corn bread she wants Jiffy brand corn bread.
Prefers flour tortillas to corn and for her I make white corn tortillas if I’m making enchiladas.
She will go to see my step children at times, twice a year she will be gone a week or so. So I’m known to make mush or tamales while she’s gone.

I have no problem with what others like, I can even make what has been deemed by others to be super tasty corn bread, I just don't like it myself. I also use flour tortillas but prefer either corn taco shells for tacos or Navajo tacos made with fry bread. My treat is hot french rolls/bread right out of the oven with scads of cold butter.

 

[tenngun]

I have no problem with what others like, I can even make what has been deemed by others to be super tasty corn bread, I just don't like it myself. I also use flour tortillas but prefer either corn taco shells for tacos or Navajo tacos made with fry bread. My treat is hot french rolls/bread right out of the oven with scads of cold butter.

Just a matter of taste. I like a strong corn flavor. My wife doesn’t.
But
I also like hard wheat bread dipped in herb oil, my wife wants soft and butter
She will eat brown beans and ham, but navy beans or Lima beans are just for me
She will eat my potato soup but my chowder is all mine
I prefer any thing savory she loves her sweet
She does like my Navajo Tacos…. But she won’t eat goat or mutton, I have to make the topping in beef

 

[kje54]

Just a matter of taste. I like a strong corn flavor. My wife doesn’t.
But
I also like hard wheat bread dipped in herb oil, my wife wants soft and butter
She will eat brown beans and ham, but navy beans or Lima beans are just for me
She will eat my potato soup but my chowder is all mine
I prefer any thing savory she loves her sweet
She does like my Navajo Tacos…. But she won’t eat goat or mutton, I have to make the topping in beef

My wife was 100s time more picky than I am (& I'm picky), other than green beans she would not touch any other type of bean. She hated grits but was raised in Virginia, I love grits but only with bacon, butter and cheddar cheese. I hate wheat bread but love oat bread, I was raised on Wonder and Rainbow breads but won't touch them these days. I love cabbage, she hated it, I love pork BBQ, she hated it, and to her all susages were "hot dogs" which she hated etc, etc.
Another bread I could eat until it's coming out of my ears is garlic bread. I will eat biscuits but only hot with a couple of sticks of butter per half biscuit or as a carb to smother in sauce/gravy dishes. I can't eat bread or crackers dry without gallons of liquid to wash them down with.

 

[appalichian hunter]

Some of you fellas just aint living right. The wife is not that pickey (she hates grits) lived in N.C. for about 4 years if we went out for breakfast I always told her too get a bowl of grits and I would eat them. About the only thing I refuse too eat is green beans, turnips and collards. Get south of the mason dixon line fellas good chow there.

 

[kje54]

Some of you fellas just aint living right. The wife is not that pickey (she hates grits) lived in N.C. for about 4 years if we went out for breakfast I always told her too get a bowl of grits and I would eat them. About the only thing I refuse too eat is green beans, turnips and collards. Get south of the mason dixon line fellas good chow there.

To each their own.

 

[Jim Wag]

Jim in La Luz

 

[kje54]

View attachment 104652

Jim in La Luz

I think I still have a box of that...... It's probably twenty years old.........

 

[kje54]

Just a matter of taste. I like a strong corn flavor. My wife doesn’t.
But
I also like hard wheat bread dipped in herb oil, my wife wants soft and butter
She will eat brown beans and ham, but navy beans or Lima beans are just for me
She will eat my potato soup but my chowder is all mine
I prefer any thing savory she loves her sweet
She does like my Navajo Tacos…. But she won’t eat goat or mutton, I have to make the topping in beef

Of course there's always Lembas Bread when going on long trips say to destinations like Mount Doom in Mordor.

 

[Jim Wag]

Of course there's always Lembas Bread when going on long trips say to destinations like Mount Doom in Mordor.

What about
Rabbiteses
My pretty

Jim in La Luz

 

[jefair1]

Merriam-Webster defines corn pone as a corn bread made without milk or eggs, backed or fried. But when you look at the recipe sites that have corn pone recipes, they all inclube milk and eggs.

 

[tenngun]

Of course there's always Lembas Bread when going on long trips say to destinations like Mount Doom in Mordor.

But you have to have pointed ears to make it

 

[tenngun]

Merriam-Webster defines corn pone as a corn bread made without milk or eggs, backed or fried. But when you look at the recipe sites that have corn pone recipes, they all inclube milk and eggs.

Webster didn’t cook
The earliest recipe for lasagna is English from the fourteenth century. It has an Italian name and is no doubt imported as an idea. It’s more of a Mac and cheese.
What foods are and how it’s made has varied from home to home and time to time
Even today is biscuit ships bread, light and fluffy quick bread or a cookie?

 

[Red Owl]

Well that dictionary reference might have value. As I said- I had this notion corn pone and corn dodgers were sort of the same thing and you could carry them around for a few days. The hoe cakes- as I understand- at the start of the Civil War most of the South had not heard about grits- they were only eaten in a few places- the much more common food was hoe cakes cooked outdoors over a fire. My version is probably not historically correct because I put white flour in with the corn meal- it sort of holds it together. I also put in a little baking powder. As I said- I wanted some "trail Food" and I could fry bacon, make a hoe cake, add beans- all in one pan. I'll have to try a more PC version.

 

[kje54]

But you have to have pointed ears to make it

I keep a set in the kitchen for just such occasions.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

In old days it was just corn meal salt and water. This was cooked on a hoe, in this case a flat hoe shaped griddle, not a garden hoe.
Fat could be added to make a harder cake that couldbe baked or pan roasted, as said this would hang together for travel, journey cake, that became Johnny cake.
Bread would be baked often with another grain added and milk or buttermilk would be used instead of water. Before baking powder with extra wheat flour corn breads could be made airry with frothed eggs
Corn dodgers are just a regional name

The hoe, originally, WAS an actual hoe.. not a garden hoe, but a cotton hoe or"choppin' how," which is MUCH larger. Field workers would carry meal and salt tied up in a bandana when they left out in the morning... At midday, you'd build a fire, clean off your choppin' hoe, and make a batter with your meal and salt. No leavening. How would be held over the fire w/ blade level... Once it was hot, batter would be poured on; with the right consistency, it can be flipped with a pocketknife. Carbs and salt: what you needed to make it through a summer day in the fields along the FL-AL border, where my paternal grandmother's family were sharecroppers.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

My wife is from northern Illinois and she douses her corn pone (she only fries it in the skillet) with maple syrup...I tried and even though I could drink maple syrup, I don't really care for the combo. I prefer cracklin corn bread, sliced with plenty of butter inside.

When I was a kid, my Momma taught me to crumble up corn bread in a glass of butter milk and drink it...and it was good.

For us, it was the leftover cornbread ( soft leavened kind, not hoecake) from dinner (as in MIDDAY meal... This was SUPPER in the evening...) Crumbled in sweet (whole) milk, a satisfying and quick meal after a HARD day working for my grandparents, great-aunts, etc., during FL Panhandle summers. Thankfully, we were, by that time, a couple of generations beyond the "cooking hoecake over a fire at the edge of the field" stage, and the midday dinner was the big meal of the day...

 

[tenngun]

The hoe, originally, WAS an actual hoe.. not a garden hoe, but a cotton hoe or"choppin' how," which is MUCH larger. Field workers would carry meal and salt tied up in a bandana when they left out in the morning... At midday, you'd build a fire, clean off your choppin' hoe, and make a batter with your meal and salt. No leavening. How would be held over the fire w/ blade level... Once it was hot, batter would be poured on; with the right consistency, it can be flipped with a pocketknife. Carbs and salt: what you needed to make it through a summer day in the fields along the FL-AL border, where my paternal grandmother's family were sharecroppers.

I found this interesting on the subject, found on you tube under Townsend