The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-08-15
LLBELING CORN BREAD
Pellagra Stories Arc Insidious Attacks on Great
 Southern Institution.

The public prints are giving curren- cy to . good deal of canned wisdom roncerning the causes which produce pellagra. and among the number they mention corn bread. This should not life. Corn bread belongs in no cate- gory of fdisease-producers. Corn bread ls d life preserver and a health gfver.
 Of course, there is corn bread and corn bread. The little cube that is set before you on Q dainty plate when you order corn bread in present-day ho- tel may produce peliagra or anything else. It is not corn bread. Corn bread is never profaned by the edge of a knife or cut like pound cake. The knife comes in contact with 1t only when spreading butter on 1t. and the butter must not be the yellowed but ter of commerce., but the buttercuppy yellow butter from the churn. the as- sembied solids of rich cream.
 It Is claimed that to make q gentle man you must begin with the grand father. Certain 1t is that to make corn bread you must begin some distance back.
 The corn must be we'll cured. dry and hard as rock candy. It is taken from the cob by hand, by rubbing an- other cob against it. Running IL through & sheller may not injure the grain, but 1t invalidates the intimacy and immedfateness of the process and injects discord into the symphony.
 When shelled the corn should be placed in a clean sack and laid on a piilon made of . crazy quilt behind the saddle. This prevents the hair from old Beck getting into the sack. The turn of corn should be carried to mill on Friday morning to insure its ~~fxra StSxaA fa ~ra1 on Saturday. The modern mill that pulverizes should be avoided. The old time mill that is turned by water pow CT or by . great wheel laid horizontal ly and slightly tipped, upon which oxen patiently walk from morning until night without moving forward. A good many two-iegged oxen do the same thing without knowing 1t.
 Sunday morning is the day of sacrf- fee. A measure of meal Is taken from the sack and emptied into e sitter. A s'bought" sitter will do. but tin pan with innumerable small holes punched in Is orthodox.
 The bran thrown aside. with care the sifted meal is emptied into Q wooden trough or bowl deftly hewn out of basswood or other suitable timber with . foot adz. Into this is poured a iimpid. translucent libaion fresh from the nearby spring and to this is added a moiety of salt from the 6ourd. It should be good, honest. barrel salt, and not this calcinated, crumbly pow der that comes in dinky sacks and which you cannot tell from sugar with out tasting 1t. If the salt crystals should be too large, rolling an empty bottle over them will reduce them.
 When the compound is thoroughly mixed, portions of it are taken up at a time and patted Into pones. Being plastic, this is easily done, and the prints of the fingers are left in long ftudinal corrugations. Good corn bread may have been made with a smooth surface, but the absence of finger marks is just grounds for suspicion.
 Az the pones are prepared they are laid in hot pan that has been greased with a bacon rind and cooked to 8 de- 1icfous crisp brown. Served for break fast the finger marks hold the melted butter or rich ham gravy and the com bination Is food fit for anyone. No one with this dish before him will say that he has no appetite for breakfast. He can eat of this bountifull, and his Mpffee will taste like nectar.
 Corn bread is pfe-eminently Q din- ner chef d'oeuvre. At the noon meal it meets it's natural complement. pot flicker; bowl of pot flicker to dip crisp corn bread in until 1t is softened and ready to melt in the mouth. F1etch- erism is never thought of. because this food Fletcherizes itself automatically or chemically, and the process, like di- gestion. Is unconscious. Mortals know nothing about ambrosia unless it be the mystery that Miss Annie prepares on her return from the cooking school, and eating that is very much like chew ing atmosphere atomized with maple sap. F1etcherisrn is all right in mas r. the regulation twenty-seven grinds of the molars only begins to subdue and render amenable the whang leather tissue. Corn bread and pot flicker are wholesome and sweet of taste and sa- vor and deglutition makes one wish for the neck of an ostrich or a giraffe that the ecstacy might be prolonged. It whets the appetite to be able to look out the window and see the pickanin- nies seated around the pot in which the feast was prepared sopping their corn pones in tho remnant of the fluid. In stress of haste or hunger to get at the solids-the greens and fat meat Lit is no break of etiquette to scoop up the softened crumbs and what flicker remains in the bowl with a spoon.
 In discussing the solids the corn bread meets another accordant com patible, buttermilk. This completes  the rare gastronomic diapason of mus cie-building. The old writers whom we cannot now translate without the aid of a glossary, tell us that the IT, tans dined on joints of behemoth and huge escarpments of leviathan washed down with buckets of milk. It must have been buttermilk. else they would never have been strong enough to fling mountains, trees and all from one country to another. ButtermiIk rein forces corn bread just as steel rods reinforce concrete. and makes for strength.
 oCrn bread produce pellagra? It is more like to cure 1t. Real corn bread and its natural concomitants are Q phyIactery against diseases of the kesh. Not until people began to seek food in ptomaine-poisoned tin cans did we hear of pellagra, appendicitis or the modern diseases. While corn bread held empire over the dinner table, the