Comfort food........

People talk a lot about food. Well, people talk a lot about ‘most anything but food seems to be a favorite with just about everyone. There’s a lot of diversity in this country of ours so naturally there’s a lot of diversity in food......at least, the food people talk about...
In the southwest, ya get a lot of talk about chiles, whether they’re hot or not, how healthy they are for you and whether they’re a miracle cure for what ails you...
Like olive oil....olives are a miracle food for much of the world, at least that's what the magazines say....
Ya got your rice and beans.....your curds and whey....you got cow and sheep and pig and chicken...you got fish and shellfish and even kelp.....you got grains and brains and a little bit of ever'thing.....’cause people are omnivorous....we'll eat anything and everything......
And in this country, we got regional food.....we got yankee food and southern food.....we got nor’easter food and, I guess, sou’wester food.....and the twain meets all the time....every region itself gets subdivided.....like TexMex and CalMex and if the shoe fits, we'd prob'ly eat that too......
Now, I’m a Kentucky boy myself.....I grew up on po'k chops and fried chicken, on biscuits and gravy and cornbread and beans.....
Did j’a ever wonder what went into the making of ‘good’ cornbread......Oh, I know that what a body thinks is good food has more to do with how they wuz raised than anything else...and if y’all wuz raised on Yankee Johnnycake, well I’m just that sorry for you ‘cause you’re prob’ly never gonna appreciate southern cornbread.....and if you’re just young, if that’s what your problem is, why they ain’t a ‘hull lot c’n be done about that either.....Heck! There’s only two cures for youth.....one is to get older and the other is....well, let’s just say it’s drastic......Sum problems just can’t be fixed with a dish of soupbeans and cornbread.....it’s like having a slice of cornbread without butter....it ain’t natural.....I’ve had people actually swear to me that margarine is not only better for you than butter, but that it tastes better also......You just gotta feel sorry for people like that....in the first place, butter is made by cows, not chemists...that fact alone should be enuff...
And I’ve had people that grew up in ‘corn’ country, y’know, like Ioway and Illinois, where the corn grows as high as an elephant’s eye....I’ve met a lot of those people that really believe that ‘field’ corn is as fit for people as it is for animals.....you’d think they never heard of sweet corn...and there ain’t many things in this old world that taste better than an ear of sweet corn, slathered with real butter and a little salt.....and that’s a fact....now, you know it is........it’s like a peach, fresh and ripe, right off the tree....there ain’t much that c’n compare with that...
But, I digress......I started out to tell about cornbread...
good ol baked in an iron skillet cornbread.....you got to have that skillet poppin’ hot with grease when you put your batter in so’s it’ll get nice and crispy brown while it’s bakin’......’n you got to use white cornmeal ‘cause the yellow has too strong a taste.....’n you c’n put just a little bit of flour, if you want...keep it from being too crumbly...You need an egg and a touch of salt and buttermilk.....if you ain’t got buttermilk and you just gotta have cornbread, why you c’n sour up some sweet milk with a little vinegar but it ain’t really the same.... Cornbread and biscuits are what’cha call ‘quick breads’ because it don’t take very long to make ‘em.....Heck! You even got biscuits in paper cans (don’t that make a lot of sense) for the truly lazy....’n I s’pect you c’n find frozen biscuits if you look...that’s just sad. Now, any fool that c’n read c’n follow a recipe and make themselves some cornbread but, biscuits are a different story....recipes for biscuits are easy to come by but that don’t mean that just anyone c’n make biscuits.....Nosirreebob......it takes the soul of an artist to make ‘gooooood’ biscuits.....If you ever watched the Andy Griffith show, you understand the difference between good and gooood....... My Momma made good biscuits but my Aunt ‘Billie, God rest her, was an artist.....she used to serve her biscuits under a netting...you just had to lift it ‘n the biscuit would float up to meet your mouth......and that's a fact!
Justin Other Smith