312 Singing Valleys 



into meal. This was sifted, and the large grains which did not 

 go through the pores of the sieve went back into the mortar 

 for another pounding. From this meal the Indian woman 

 made her nookik and appones. Sometimes wild berries were 

 mixed with the dough before baking. Peter Kalm wrote en- 

 thusiastically of the flavor of this Indian berry-bread. 



Boiled with water, the meal became suppawn. If the squaw 

 happened to have some salt, she seasoned the suppawn with 

 it. Lacking salt, she made do with hickory ash. 



To me, corn meal mush means very hot days in summer, 

 sweet with the smell of sun-baked grass, and noisy with 

 locusts. While Geordie took the tired horse around to the 

 stable and harnessed another for the afternoon round of calls, 

 my father would sit down at the mahogany table with me 

 beside him. At his place would be a tray with a deep dish of 

 cold corn meal mush and a tall, brown Bennington-ware jug 

 filled with fresh buttermilk. My father always ate his mush 

 and buttermilk from a blue bowl which had a picture of 

 Kenilworth Castle on the bottom. When the last spoonful 

 had disappeared, there under a thin milk film would be the 

 turrets old in story. 



"Look," my father would say, "right there, under that 

 crumb of corn, is where Robert Dudley stood and said how- 

 d'ye-do to Queen Elizabeth. And this not an hour after he 

 had ... What do you think?" 



"I don't know," I would say. Knowing well enough, but 

 finding it too awful to put into words, and too delicious to 

 miss hearing him tell it to me all over again. 



So the romance and the tragedy of fair Amy Robsart were 

 brought to me in a bowl of suppawn. 



Corn batter-cakes are a breakfast standby in many parts of 

 the South. To make these, you start with two cups of cooked 

 corn meal mush. Add to this three-quarters of a cup of white 

 flour, two eggs well beaten, one teaspoon of salt and sufficient 

 cold milk to form a thin batter. Pour this from a pitcher onto 

 a greased, hot griddle, and bake brown on both sides. Try 



