308 Singing Valleys 



whites. Drop this stiff batter by spoonfuls into deep boiling 

 lard and fry a rich brown. 



Made by this rule, the fritters can be served with a meat 

 or egg dish. Or you can sweeten the batter and serve them for 

 dessert with a wine or fruit sauce. 



About the time the Hunters' Moon is riding the sky, the 

 men I know go duck-shooting in the marsh, or down through 

 Canopus Hollow after pheasants. They come home from 

 these sorties late in the dusk; wet, weary in the joints and 

 incredibly hungry. On such nights, by common consent, there 

 is hominy pudding. This is made of boiled grits, milk, butter, 

 salt, pepper and eggs; the yolks and whites beaten and added 

 separately. The pudding is baked for an hour in a moderate 

 oven. Sometimes we add grated cheese and paprika to it. But 

 with grilled pork chops, hot, spiced apple sauce and a wooden 

 bowl of mixed endive, escarolle and chicory salad well, it 

 makes up for those birds that got away. 



Hominy muffins are good, too. But unless these are made 

 by a skilled hand they are apt to sit on the stomach as heavily 

 as an importunate creditor. And cold hominy mush, cut in 

 squares, rolled in flour and fried a rich brown, served with 

 maple syrup is good eating, whether there is fried chicken to 

 go along with it or not. 



You can fry corn-meal mush in the same way. And very 

 good this is, too, with either maple or corn syrup. Or with 

 thick, dark, New Orleans molasses. 



Perhaps you have to have your roots in American soil for 

 two generations at least to savor this sort of eating. The French 

 women who came out to Louisiana in the days of the Bubble 

 complained bitterly at having to eat corn meal. A letter from 

 the Governor to Paris says, 



The men in the colony begin through habit to use corn as an 

 article of food; but the women, who are mostly Parisians, have for 

 this food a dogged aversion, which has not been subdued. They 



