The story goes that my maternal grandmother Luesta Duers left Windsor, North Carolina, Windsor to earn a teacher’s certificate at North Carolina Normal School for teachers. She dropped out of school, eloped, and migrated with her husband to Philadelphia. Apparently a sister sent word to her that she had a jobs lined up in Ossining, New York doing domestic work. In the North, cooks continued the southern tradition of regularly baking corn bread, but for some unknown reason it took on a distinctively sweeter taste. Southerners dismissed the sweeter northern interpretation of corn bread as unfit for consumption. However, over time, the corn bread of newcomers from the South became more northern in style, just like the migrants themselves.
Corn Bread Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup of molasses
1 tablespoon baking soda dissolved in 1/3 cup of water
1 teaspoon of salt
2 cups corn meal
2 cups rye meal, or ground graham crackers mixed well together
Directions
Grease four baking pans and pour the mixture into them. Grease the covers and place lightly over the bread. Steam two and a half or three hours. After steaming, let the loaves stand a few minutes, when they can be lightly shaken out.”
The Florida Agriculturist April 1892