Sweet cornbread around our house is known as Yankee cornbread – i.e., made by folks who don’t really know how to cook cornbread.
And sorry, but y’all is plural. I would NEVER say “y’all” to just one person. It’s Just Wrong.
Archergal
Georgia Peach and True Daughter of the South
I’ve had them twice, the first was last summer while I was in Warner Robins GA for a job interview, and the second was a few weeks later at a fried vegetable stand at the Indiana State Fair. I had to look hard to find them at the State Fair, BTW.
Both places used onion ring batter, but the GA restaraunt used pickle chips, and the vegetable stand used spears.
The recipe wouldn’t be hard: get dill pickles in the form you like, dip in onion ring batter, and deep fry until the batter is done.
They go down so easy, and just beg for a cold one or three as chasers…
I lived in Georgia for eight years and loved being called Miss Kitten by all the neighbor children. When I try that up here in the frigid north, people look at me funny.
And I miss eating Country Captain, a wonderful chicken dish that featured at so many luncheons in the Columbus area. Had it at three different luncheons in one week! And fourteen years later, a little y’all still slips out now and again.
But I don’t miss the kudzu and the fireants.
Y’know, if you change that to Good ol’ Boy, Redneck and Cracker, you have a pretty good White Southerner Racial Bigotry Index.
And even if they aren’t, they might still be ‘cousins’, ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ (or is that more of an East Texas thing?)
Maybe that has more to do with the swamp than with the bear.
So, what’s the thing with black coffee in the South, is it considered tacky, or what? For what it’s worth (not much but hey, gotta tangent…), I may be the only male Texan west of I-35 who doesn’t rank his masculinity by the blackness of his coffee. I’ve had a few folks give the “real men drink black coffee” line, to which I tend to look them straight in the eye, pour a half coffee, half milk cup and drink it.
THANK YOU!
Writers that aren’t from the South always make this mistake when writing Southern characters. I lived and travelled around the South for 22 years and never hear “y’all” used singularly. It doesn’t. Make. Sense.
Oh, we make fun of our own regional accents as well. As a matter of fact, here in Rhode Island, we make fun of people’s accents one or two towns over, like the infamous “Cranston whine” (“Hi, I’m from Creeeeaaaanstin!”).
Sorry, but You are wrong.
Well I suppose I’m not a southerner by geography, but I fit right in…
let’s not forget that “fixing to” is actually pronounced “Fittinda”
I’m fittinda run down to the ice cream store, y’all want anything?
Thank you for pointing that out!
I think what screws up a lot of yankee heathens – I mean our fine visitors from the North – is that they don’t recognize the subtler points of southern hospitality. Invitations in particular; you never invite just one person to any party/wedding/tent revival/lynching/etc., but you make an implicit invitation to the person’s significant other, children, cousins, close friends, drinking buddies, chain gang compatriots, etc. Thus, even if you’re talking just to one person, you say, “Would y’all like to come on over Sunday week?”
[celestina scratchin’ her head]
What on earth is sweet cornbread? I ain’t never heard of such.
All of y’all out there talkin’ about you don’t like grits ain’t had them cooked right is all. You got to get them stick-to-the-pot grits.
Well, good lord. I really must have had my nose stuck in my spaceship for too long. I ain’t never heard of this black coffee denoting machismo business either. I just figured folks drink they coffee the way they like it. I like mine with a little cream, or sometimes I’ll just drink a whole pot of espresso straight up. YMMV
Something to add to that list: Southerners usually got to interject the lord, Jesus, or some other religious reference in they speech somewhere.
Something this Southerner can’t understand: How do Northerners stand living all cramped together in them row houses or apartments without a good bit of land and trees and greenery around them? I guess it’s just an urban thing I don’t understand.
Friendly smiles from strangers.
Steaming hot cornbread crumbled intp a glass of cold milk.
A porch swing, and a steady rain on a tin roof.
The eruption of cheers when you see your school on the list of snow closings.
The last puddle of eggs and gravy sopped up with the last bite of biscuit.
Why do you think my user name is MsRobyn? 
Neuroman, where in Texas are you? Every restaurant I go to in San Antonio offers sweet tea, and you have to tell the server what you want.
Robin
Southerners know “barbecue” is a noun, not a verb.
Southerners know that a plate of barbecue is best when it’s served with a side of brunswick stew.
And Southerners know the delight of buying a small bag of Tom’s peanuts from a vending machine, and a Coke from a Coke machine, pouring the peanuts into the Coke bottle, and eating peanuts and drinking Coke at the same time. Yum!
Southerners know:
That it isn’t a crime to wear a rumpled seer-sucker suit to work during the heat of summer.
Tea is sweet and cold. I was in New Jersey in August and visited a place for lunch. I asked for “tea.” They brought me a cup of hot tea. God, how I missed home.
You can hear the air in summer. It has a thick, muffled, buzz to it.
What it means when you say, “Damn, she’s close today.” Except my Grandmother would never have said “damn.” (“Close” means “humid.”)
What someone is asking when they say “Who are your people?” they want to know who your relatives are. You’re probably related anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
How incredibly sexy it sounds to have a beautiful Southern woman say “Yes, sugar.”
How to take it slow and easy. The way God intended.
Mmmmmm . . . grits.
Mmmmmm . . . hot cornbread crumbled in cold milk
Mmmmmm . . . sweet tea
Y’all are making me hungry! And y’all is DEFINITELY plural. I’ve never used the world y’all in referring to one person. No one I know has done it, either.
My Yankee husband thinks cornbread is supposed to be sweet. So when I cook it, I cook it my way.
Two grease tins on the stove: the one for bacon drippings (solid), for dipping out into your purple-hull peas or pole beans (that’s for when you don’t have a ham bone) or to fry up an egg in or to grease up your cornbread tin; and the other for your fry oil (liquid) for frying pork chops and chicken in, since it’s good for more than one use. A third grease tin under the sink next to the garbage pail: for fish-fry oil and hamburger grease (no use in reusing those, really—no use for hamburger grease, and fish-fry oil, in addition to being fishy, is going to have singed bits of cornmeal batter in it—so this can is for throwing out, unless you want to try straining it and making soap from it or something).
A wooden bowl for biscuit-making, with flour and baking powder and salt already mixed up, with a little well in the middle where you pour your milk and start the dough ball and roll it up against the drier walls of the well until it gets to being just the right consistency for rolling out your biscuits in the palm of your hands.
Big tea pitcher on the countertop, next to the box of black loose-leaf tea, which you toss into the ceramic (always ceramic!) teapot or teapan once the water’s done come to a boil and let it sit a spell before pouring it through the tea strainer into the pitcher, which has a few inches of tap water at the bottom to keep the boiling hot concentrated tea from cracking the pitcher when it hits. Ice doesn’t go in the tea pitcher, y’all, ice goes in the glasses.
Sweet milk is to differentiate it from buttermilk, which is hard to find in other than lowfat or no-fat, and the second day in on your pone of cornbread (which you cook with buttermilk in the first place) you might want to crumble up a corner of it into a bowl and pour buttermilk over it instead of heating it up. Or you could crumble it up cold into your cabbage or any of your vegetable pot liquor.
And eat it with a bit of sweet watermelon rind pickle.
Believe it or not, my parents have used the same pitcher for ice tea for 50 years. They got it as a wedding present and it is still in use (the spout has only been chipped for about 46 years though). They have a large estate, but the only thing my brothers and I will fight over when they’re gone is who gets Mama’s ice tea pitcher.
Hmmm…I believe it’s “fittinta”
It’s not that black coffee is macho, it’s just not feminine (at least where I’m from).
Lord yes. I’ll add a quiet summer evening with a breeze and the heat lightning playing off in the distance.
Damn skippy. The verb is “grillin’”. “Watcha doin’ tonight?” “Grillin’ ribs”
And Coke is the generic of soda (with the possible exception of RC Cola). I never have figgered out what the hell “pop” is.
I’ll add a couple:
Moonpies and RC Cola!
Sunday afternoon covered dish suppers at church.
Watching the Braves (lose) on TBS with your Grandad.
Sneakin 'baccy with your friends while fishin (most likely with a piece of hot dog for bait)
Southerners know that no coffee shop or snack bar is worth a damn unless they make sure when you order a “coke” that you know you’re getting a Pepsi, an RC or a Co-cola.
Southerners know that pie crust isn’t really pie crust unless it’s made with lard.
Southerners don’t think anything of it when the mayor and police chief are out drinking on Saturday night and in the second row at church on Sunday morning.
I think this is the question I want to ask, or maybe celestina is just “funnin” with us Yankees. :dubious:
What is sweet cornbread, compared to whatever you make down there? I thought cornbread was cornbread. No adjective associated with the noun at all. Is your cornbread sour?
Seriously, what is the difference?