My South | Walk back in time
My birthday is later this week, and I decided to buy myself an early present, but I didn’t realize it would require a walk back in time to find it. Let me explain.
Jilda told me this morning on my way to work that she was making fagioli soup. We discovered this soup a few years ago while eating at Olive Garden and fell in love with it.
My lovely spouse is like the Pink Panther except she cracks recipes instead of safes. My stomach rejoiced when she cracked the fagioli soup code. She’s made it several times, and if there’s a better meal on frosty winter evenings, I’ve never eaten it. Of course, soup requires cornbread. Spending time up north, I learned a lot of folks there ate crackers instead of cornbread, which I consider almost sinful.
I don’t cook a lot of things, but in my opinion, my cornbread is exceptional. Through the years, I developed a secret recipe with a thin top crust that is crunchy and golden brown.
The only good way I’ve found to bake cornbread is in an old-fashioned skillet that’s as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvil.
The perfect crust is almost an art form. The skillet preheats with the oven.
When the timer dings saying the oven is at 400 degrees, I remove the empty skillet and toss in a scoop of coconut oil, which instantly melts, greasing the skillet, so the bread doesn’t stick.
When the cornbread comes out of the oven after about 30 minutes, it’s an excellent complement to most any kind of soup.
The one problem is that all our skillets are about as big as manhole covers, and in the past we wound up tossing half the uneaten cornbread out to the chickens.
Solving this problem is where the walk back in time came in. I’ve never seen an iron skillet at the big-box stores. You can get the thin ones made in Asia, but I wouldn’t use one for cornbread.
Yesterday, I walked into Andrew Posey & Son Hardware store in Jasper humming happy birthday to me. A small bell on the door jingled. It wasn’t an electronic chime, but a real bell. Hearing that sound triggered a déjà vu experience. The wooden floors looked as if they were made from heart pine and creaked in places as I walked up and down the aisles.
On the old shelves were tools, toys and aqua-colored mason jars used for canning. The store is jam-packed with all kinds of useful things for the house and garden. When is the last time you saw a place that sold butter churns, cookie cutters and replacement ax handles?
Out front was a line of Red Rider wagons. There’s an old photograph of me as a barefoot kid in a diaper riding in one of these wagons. I must have pushed that baby a million miles.
It’s a miracle I didn’t max out my credit cards before I walked out. But when I left, all I had was a new iron skillet that’s about half the size of our old ones.
Progress and change are inevitable. Many of the old hardware and dry goods stores were lost in the rush toward things that are cheaper, faster and shinier. I’m thankful some of the stores have survived in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia to give us an opportunity to walk back in time and buy things that will last.
Rick Watson is a columnist and author. His latest book, “Life Changes,” is available on Amazon.com. You can contact him at rick@homefolkmedia.com.