Love as Hot Water Cornbread
... pretty like a doll...
Love as Hot Water Cornbread
It became a family joke, still running to this day. Every time we went to my aunt Dolly’s house for a major gathering, I’d make a beeline to the hot water cornbread. “Uh oh! Here’s Nicki. Hide the cornbread, y’all!” It was so good.
I’d snag a piece and eat it before we were ready to sit down. When it came time to fix our plates, I’d have 2-3 more pieces. When we were getting ready to leave and making plates to go, I’d add some more. Hot water cornbread doesn’t warm up well after it’s gone cold but that’s alright. By the time I got home, I’d already eaten the goodness.
It’s like a flat hush puppy without the onion, buttermilk, egg, or seasoning in the batter. That doesn’t sound very appetizing to spell out, but believe me, it is.
Dolly made the best hot water cornbread. That’s not her real name, but when she was a baby, she was pretty like a doll so it stuck. She was the second of my great-grandmother’s surviving daughters I was raised knowing, on my mother’s side. Aunt M, Dolly, my grandmother, Aunt R. My three great-aunts shaped me and my soul food palate greatly.
M made the greens and macaroni and cheese.
Dolly made the hot water cornbread and potato salad.
And R made the desserts: lemon pound cake, chocolate pound cake, 7-up cake.
Dolly was the hostess. She had us over for all the holidays, especially Christmas. Dolly would have themes to her decorations: white winter wonderland, red Santa’s workshop, and whatever the blue one was. She always opened her home up to us all— when my mother needed breathing room as a teen; when my great-grandmother needed round-the-clock care. When our house burned down and my family had to split up until we could find a new home, she let my sister stay. She’d just remind us not to drink her husband’s Pepsi. I still know the phone number to her landline by heart.
Dolly was the joker. One time when I was little, I asked her for a toothpick. She told me to look next to the refrigerator. I looked all over and didn’t see anything. She said between the counter and the refrigerator. “Ain’t nothing between there but a broom!” “Yep.”
Dolly was the picky one. She’d only ever want a scoop of this and a little taste of that.
Sixteen years ago, we had an unexpected death in the family. Friends and loved ones brought food by, like you do. Someone (not any of us and not from the south) made a “macaroni and cheese” with an offensive array of vegetables in it. I pulled back the foil on the tray, and Dolly looked at the mötley goop with a blank face and walked away. When she circled back into the kitchen later, she pulled me aside and said “I don’t know what that is but that ain’t no macaroni and cheese so put that to the side somewhere so nobody else has to look at it, hear?”
Several years ago, Mama volunteered me to make some greens for a family dinner at Dolly’s. I was so nervous. The generations following our matriarchs were cooking, of course, but no one had the signature requested dish yet. People were picking up chicken from Kroger or Publix. Some of my cousins were still being asked to bring ice and cups.
I made the greens the night before. They’re always better after they’ve had a chance to sit. Mama likes a mix of turnip, mustard, and collards, heavy on the turnip. We brought the greens over. My cousin, a chef/caterer, tasted them and started listing everything I should have done and what else I needed to do. Dolly took ”just a forkful,” and I held my breath. I looked away. Then she said it. “These are good, Nicki.” And she ate that forkful and asked for a little more. Just a little bit. Naw, a little more than that.
It remains the highest compliment of my life.
Dolly took her hot water cornbread recipe with her when she passed away Sunday. She never taught me how to make it. Oh, she let me watch her and she told me once, “it’s just cornmeal, hot water, and oil for the frying pan,” but I knew she was holding something back. She smiled when I called her out on it. I’ve tried to make it twice in my adulthood but it was awful so I never attempted it again.
Was love the secret ingredient? No, I think it was butter and a tainch of sugar. But I know where the love went. Every time I was about to leave her house, when Dolly would call out “Nicki, did you get your cornbread?” it followed me home.
A video from my IG of Dolly making hot water cornbread. Her fingerprints would fade as the pieces cooked, but I remember them.
This past Fourth of July, I made potato salad for the first time ever. I was too intimidated to ask Dolly to show me how to make it, but I found a recipe from a soul food cook I trust and took a leap. I tweaked it a bit— a little more of this, a little less of that— and when I tasted the final mix, I was 7 years old, sitting in Dolly’s kitchen again, leaning over a big ole sea foam-colored Tupperware bowl. I let a man with a funny accent and swirling brown eyes have some of that potato salad. His second helping filled half his plate. And then he took another portion home in one of my good glass containers.
I’ve been making Aunt R’s chocolate pound cake for a few years now. It’s still not quite what I remember, but when I make it for others, my friends press fingers into their plates to pick up the crumbs and their eyebrows dance with delight. The one with the swirling eyes likes to take a big slice with his coffee the next morning.
The love… it follows me.