316 Singing Valleys 



You get you some co'n meal. White's the best. A bitty salt. 

 And 'bout a dime's worth of soda. Not what you kin buy with 

 a dime; what you kin put onto one of 'em. Mi* that up good 

 with some nice fresh-churned buttermilk till you got a batter. 

 Take and drop that outen a spoon onto your hot spider, and 

 clap the cover down onto it. Leave 'em to bake maybe half 

 an hour, till they're sweet and brown. You jest cain't help 

 likin' them pones, ma'am." 



Pones made that way, with cracklings mixed through the 

 batter before baking, are as good food as any epicure could 

 sigh for. They are best after a day out of doors fishing or 

 shooting. And for a lunch under a sweet-smelling locust tree 

 in haying-time, you can't beat them, either. 



Hoecake, I have read, gets its name from the Indian nookik. 

 It is merely corn meal, salted and mixed with scalding water 

 or milk. The batter should be left to stand for at least an hour 

 before spreading it thinly on a pan, or on the greased blade of 

 the field hoe, and baking it over the open fire. 



When Abraham Lincoln recalled his childhood, he remem- 

 bered that the Sundays of those years in Kentucky and Indiana 

 were marked by wheat cakes. On all other days the Lincolns 

 ate corn-dodgers. 



One point in favor of the dodger is that it can be baked, or 

 steamed in a pot like a dumpling. It all depends on what else 

 you have to eat. Dodgers are made of one cup of meal, salted; 

 two tablespoons of melted shortening, and sufficient cold 

 water to form a dough which can be rolled between the palms 

 into sticks four inches long and the thickness of a hoe handle. 

 Bake these in the oven or on a greased skillet. Or drop them 

 on top of a pot full of boiling pokeberry shoots or turnip 

 greens, flavored with a ham knuckle or pig's jowl. Let them 

 steam twenty minutes or so, and then eat them with the pot- 

 likker. 



In parts of New England, they make corn dumplings like 

 this and drop them on top of a pan of stewing sweetened 



