Dawn Phelps
Columnist
I am writing this on New Year’s Eve. The house is quiet now, and businesses in town are closed. That’s fine. It is time for a little quiet after having four wonderful grown-up grandchildren here for a few days for Christmas, along with their spouses, 2 great-grands, and a few other family and friends.
One of our great grands, Baby Ellis, is nine months old, and he was so much fun to watch as he played with his 3-year-old brother Elliott—”baby watching” is so much fun!
Tomorrow will be the first day of 2026, and I have simple, tasty foods planned that remind me of my growing-up years in middle Tennessee not far from Nashville. As kids, we sometimes listened to Grand Ole Opry on the radio but never went to the Grand Ole Opry until after I married Tom many years later.
Tomorrow we will have home-cooked foods that include cornbread baked in an iron skillet as in the past, traditional black-eyed peas seasoned with ham hocks, creamed turnips, boiled cabbage, and coleslaw. In Tennessee we also enjoyed our greens, peas and beans, and vegetables from our gardens.
Looking back, as young kids, during the summer, my siblings and I had our own little garden spots, and our mama helped us choose what we would grow. Now we realize she was quietly guiding us to grow a variety of vegetables, so we did not end up with too much of the same vegetable. We all learned how to become successful gardeners as children!
Some of you may say “Ooh, yuck” to veggies. But my sibs and I grew up eating lots of veggies with fresh-baked cornbread at noon and supper each day. Our entire family (parents, 7 kids, and Grandma Rountree) were almost vegetarian!
I wonder what others in Kansas will be eating tomorrow to celebrate New Year’s Day. Given a choice about the menu, maybe you would choose foods from your childhood too. Thankfully Tom is also a vegetable lover, maybe because his Granddad Phelps was a prolific gardener like Tom’s brother Dick is now.
During my younger years, New Year’s Day foods were not as important to our family as the foods we ate on Christmas Day. Tangerines, bananas, pecans for breakfast, and traditional desserts like my Aunt Mary’s jam cake and homemade coconut cake and much more on Christmas Day!
We did not usually have a favorite food on New Year’s Day, but we did have one food that we ate twice a day all year long—cornbread! And it was always tasty for noon and evening meals. We always made in a heavy black iron skillet, and I plan to make cornbread in a skillet to welcome 2026!
Cornbread is the first food I learned to cook when I was only eight or nine years old, and here is how we made it in Tennessee. First and foremost, our family always baked cornbread in our iron “cornbread” skillet.
Prior to mixing the cornbread batter, we heated the oven to 450 degrees and put a dollop of bacon grease in the skillet to melt. The skillet was very heavy, and it got very hot. So, I used a heavy potholder, and as a kid, I had to carefully carry the skillet with both hands. The hot grease would be added to the batter before it was baked.
The cornbread batter was made from cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, a touch of sugar, milk, and an egg. Sometimes the bacon grease became so “smoking” hot that it made a sizzling sound when we poured it into the batter.
After adding the hot grease, we stirred the batter again, poured the batter into the hot skillet, and put the bread in the oven to cook. We knew the bread was about ready when we saw a light brown crust forming around the inside edges of the skillet, and the bread was becoming firm.
When the bread was fully cooked, we put a plate over the cornbread that was still in the skillet. With our left hand, we held the plate securely on the bottom of the plate while we flipped the skillet over with our right hand, leaving the cornbread on the plate.
If our bread did not stick to the skillet, our cornbread was a success, and the bread was ready to cut into pie-shaped pieces and eat! But it was disappointing when the bread stuck to the pan and tore into pieces. That’s why Tennessee cooks reserved a skillet “for cornbread only,” and we were to never, ever scrub the skillet because it ruins “the seasoning.”
So, there you have it, Tom and my plan for our New Year’s meal—veggies and Tennessee cornbread which remind me of my childhood in Tennessee. So, I guess I am looking back while looking toward 2026.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year filled with many special moments and memories!
