This past month our church had two picnics, both of which were perfect. The weather was perfect, the food was perfect and the fellowship was perfect.

To the first one I carried a cornbread salad, but for the second one I didn’t have to take anything. Hubby and I just went and enjoyed the fun.

If you have never tried cornbread salad, I have a great recipe for you and it is the best time of the year to try it. Cornbread salad in the summertime is like chili in the wintertime, a must-have. It is like a cool, garden salad with Southern charm. It is also a potluck favorite.

My mother and grandmother taught me to make cornbread, although I’m not sure who taught me first. Maybe I just picked it up from watching both of them.

Regardless, cornbread was a staple food in our house. We ate it almost daily – and for good reason; it is good and fairly inexpensive. I had a few favorite meals with cornbread. (And still do.) One is pinto beans and fried potatoes with cornbread.

One of my other favorite cornbread meals was, and is, white beans and cornbread, fresh sliced tomatoes and onions – I mean fresh as in straight from the garden. This is the stuff I was raised on and I love it to this day.

One of my childhood memories is of my dad, who would usually wander into the kitchen a few hours after dinner, crumble up a piece of leftover cornbread in a glass then pour in enough milk to cover it. Add a teaspoon or two of sugar and he would have one of his favorite comfort foods.

Another one was with white bread, a banana and some milk. Tear a slice of white bread into pieces and put it into a glass. Slice some chunks of banana on top of that then add a little bit of sugar. Cover the whole thing with some milk and you have a perfect banana-milk-bread snack.

These were two of my Dad’s favorite after-dinner desserts.

I’m not sure where the recipes came from and I’m not sure how good they might be. I Googled it, but came up with nothing. I guess this was such a “way-back” Southern thing that most people knew nothing about it. Maybe it has no history, or maybe it was just something people down on the farm would do. I don’t know but it has history in our family, and with it a lot of memories attached to it.

Did anyone reading this ever have this or know about these after-dinner gourmet snacks? Just wondering. I haven’t tried this as an adult – I’m afraid my memories would be spoiled if I do. My oldest sister tried it though, and her remark was, “Yuk! Don’t spoil your memory!” OK, I won’t.

Both my mom and my grandmother made cornbread the same way, which is the Southern way. Heat the pan and bacon drippings to ‘sizzling’ then pour the bacon drippings into the cornbread batter, mix it really fast and then pour the batter into the hot skillet. This method creates a deep, golden brown and crunchy crust.

We don’t eat a lot of bacon unless I am fixing breakfast for visitors (my grandchildren). They love bacon and we can go through quite a bit of it. So, when I do fix bacon, I always allow the drippings to cool some then I pour them into a mini-cube ice tray and set them in the freezer.

Later, I pop the cubes out of the tray and seal them in a zip-lock bag.

Kay Bona is an award-winning columnist and photographer. Contact her at [email protected].