Cornbread Quotes

“Earlier, Lidy had set out loaves of her fresh wheat bread, dusted with seeds and salt, along with two peach pies with their crisscross crusts of golden brown. But the rest was brought by neighbors. Pans of fresh-picked green beans boiled with bacon and black pepper or mountains of mashed potatoes. Plus plates of biscuits, jars of jam from blackberry to huckleberry and everything in between; heaping bowls of canned peaches, hot peppers, pickles and peas. Someone had brought a thick beef stew in a cast-iron pot, still steaming with chunks of carrot, red potato and onion. Skillets of cornbread in every iteration but— Missouri being a border state— falling into one of two camps: white Southern style, with a fine crumb and not a bit of sweet, and its more crumbly Yankee cousin, made with coarser yellow cornmeal, sugar and fewer eggs.
And the desserts! Molasses crinkles and cinnamon-dusted snickerdoodles, oatmeal raisin cookies and lemon bars, derby pie, and every type of fruit pie. Not to mention the dark golden pecan pies with their sweet syrupy glaze, sugar pie, and both sweet potato and pumpkin pie, too. Crumb cake and pound cake.”
― Michelle Collins Anderson, The Moonshine Women

“I free two cast-iron skillets of cornbread from the oven just in time and leave them to cool. Frost women do not burn their cornbread. With a pastry brush, I Van Gogh some honeysuckle butter onto the perfectly golden full moons.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I glance at the vaulted brick wall next to the oven, where hangs the Frost family’s vast collection of cast iron. Skillets and grill pans and cornbread molds in the shape of whole ears of corn dangle from the chipped brick, seasoned under generations of strong butter, stronger magic, and the strongest women. Despite the delightful floral aroma of the honeysuckle butter cooling over the nutty cornbread, my heart clenches.
I’d trade one of these priceless, magic-imbued skillets for my mom to be here with me right now. If only to see this batch of cornbread, which looks perfect, humility be damned. Rich gold crust to match everything else in this place.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I cut the cornbread into plump golden bricks on a tray. In the hands of a Farewitch, cornbread can cure the common cold or general under-the-weather malaise. Mom has a stunning recipe with an old incantation to go along with it that makes the bread particularly buttery and makes it work faster than unregulated Sudafed.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler