Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
    Follow baking instructions above. This cornbread is heavier and more everyday than the one above, but holds up very well to being crumbled into soup or buttermilk.
    RECIPE 3
1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
    Combine ingredients and bake as above. This cornbread has the inestimable flavor that only buttermilk can impart.
    ALAFAIR’S MEATLOAF
1 1/2 lbs. ground beef or ground beef and pork combination
2 cups corn flakes
1 cup home canned tomatoes with juice
1 egg
1/4 cup minced onion
salt and pepper to taste
    Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Squish together with your hands until thoroughly mixed. (This is a disgusting process, unless the cook needs to deal with unresolved aggression or can delegate the task to an eight-year-old assistant, who will probably enjoy it very much.) Pat into an ungreased loaf pan. Bake in a fast oven (425 degrees) for 1 hour for a drier meatloaf, or in a medium oven (350 degrees) for 1 1/2 hours for a juicier one.
    VARIATION: Substitute 1 cup milk for tomatoes and 1 cup dry bread cubes for corn flakes.
    SHAW’S FAVORITE MEATLOAF SANDWICH
2 thick slices of leftover meatloaf
2 pieces of white bread
2 slices of red onion
mustard and ketchup to taste
    Assemble sandwich thus: On one slice of bread spread one or two tablespoons of yellow mustard. Arrange slabs of meatloaf on top of mustard. Press the onion into the meatloaf so it won’t fall off. Pour two or three glugs of ketchup over all. Top with a final slice of bread, pressing it down firmly with the heel of your hand to glue into place. For best results, eat over a bucket to catch the drips.
    MOLASSES PIE
    Filling for One Pie:
2 cups light molasses
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tbs. melted butter
juice of one lemon
nutmeg to taste
    Beat all ingredients together in a large bowl. Pour into a partially baked pie shell and bake in a medium oven (350 degrees) until set (30-45 minutes).
    PECAN PIE
3 eggs
2 tsp. butter
1 1/2 cups dark corn syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sugar
¼ tsp. salt
1 cup pecan halves
    Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Stir in the rest of the ingredients. Pour into an unbaked 9-inch pie shell and bake for 45 minutes in a 400-degree oven. Miraculously, the pecans will rise to the top to form a spectacular crunchy layer. Don’t even ask about calories.
    ALAFAIR’S NEVER-FAIL PIE CRUST
3/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup boiling water
pinch salt
2 cups flour
1 tbs. milk
    Pour the boiling water over the shortening and mix until melted and creamy. Sift together flour and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed shortening and mix together to form dough. The dough will be rather crumbly. Add the milk and knead briefly to make the dough easier to handle.
    Flour the counter top and your rolling pin well before rolling out the dough. This recipe makes enough dough for two crusts. If you are making a single-crust pie such as the molasses pie above, the remaining dough can be frozen and will still be easy to work with when thawed. Of course, Alafair would have had no way to freeze the remaining dough unless it were the middle of winter, but then with nine children she wouldn’t have had any remaining crust to worry about.
    This particular recipe makes what Alafair would have called a very short (flaky) crust.
    The Drippings Jar
    Alafair and all her female relations would have been unable to cook without the drippings jar, which was kept within arm’s reach of the stove. Into this jar was poured the grease that was left in the skillet after frying any piece of meat. Bacon grease was especially desirable for both its quantity and taste.
    This grease, which was semiliquid in summer and semisolid in winter, was used to fry anything that needed to be fried, such as vegetables, eggs, pancakes, and johnnycakes. It was also used as a tasty flavoring when cooking savory dishes. Alafair could tell by the smell if the fat was going rancid, which it sometimes did in hot weather. She would then throw it out and start over. It never took too long to collect another jar full.
    Alafair and other farm wives had no idea about calories or cholesterol, so they never put them in their cooking. One could tell this was true just by seeing how thin these farm people were. They only knew that they craved fat after carrying yearling calves, buckets of milk and small children around under their arms all day long.
    Coffee
    Alafair made coffee by