Looking for a Home

My mother grew up in a small rural community called East Mt. Zion, and the people there developed a kind of slang that was called "Mt. Zion talk." It's really interesting, but that's not what I want to talk about today. I mention that slang because one of the phrases was that something was "looking for a home," which meant (as I understand it) that something was a few steps away from the garbage can. (My interpretation may not be entirely accurate.) Here's a good example of some bananas that are "looking for a home."

This happens in our household all the time. We buy a bunch of bananas, but before we get them all eaten, they've gone from perfect to overripe. Of course, no one wants to eat them then. Normally, I make banana bread, but my family is not too crazy about it and usually I end up being the one who has to eat the entire loaf. I've been on the lookout for other ways to use these bananas that are "looking for a home."

Last night, we had a meeting of a small group at church, and I had to bring some kind of dessert. I didn't have time (or inclination) to make something elaborate, so I got it in my head that I would make something with those bananas. Originally, I looked for a brownie recipe, but when all of the recipes seemed to be calling for a box of brownie mix (which I didn't have), I modified my search to look for blondies. And boy did I find a gem of a recipe!

The recipe was on a blog that had borrowed it from another blog, so I'm not going to worry about giving credit. The recipe actually seemed like an adaptation of the butterscotch brownie recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook. Here it is:

5 Tbsp butter (one commenter said she used only 4 Tbsp and it worked fine, so I'll try that next time - always looking for a way to trim calories!)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 fully ripe bananas, well-mashed (about 2/3 cup)
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour (the original called for half white and half wheat flour)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

To make the blondies, melt the butter in a saucepan, then remove from heat and stir in the brown sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and blend well. Stir in the mashed banana, again blending well. Add the dry ingredients and nuts and stir until everything is moistened. Pour into a greased 8x8 baking pan and cook for 25-28 minutes in a 350-degree oven.

These little bars were simply mouth-watering right out of the oven. I'm having one with my faux coffee this morning and it seems a little heavier, though - I guess it's all that brown sugar. Anyway, I've found one more good use for "homeless" bananas!

The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

It's been a rough summer. For the past two weeks, temperatures have been 105 degrees or hotter every day, and this is on top of a very dry season (no rain at all for the past month and little rain before that). For some reason, the weather makes me think of a couple of books I read when I was a kid and to make me want to read them again - The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Edge of Time by Loula Grace Erdman.

Even when I was a kid, The First Four Years was sort of painful to read, because Almanzo had such awful luck with his farm. The first crop was promising, but was destroyed by hail; the second crop was just mediocre because the growing season was dry; the third crop was promising, but was quickly destroyed by hot, dry wind. And through all that, he was building up debt to buy equipment that would make the work on the farm more efficient. Before they married, Laura objected to Almanzo working on the farm because farmers have such a hard time making a living.

That hasn't changed. My husband has planted a blueberry patch as his retirement project/income (he plans to quit teaching in another five years or so). The first couple of years, the patch was great - lots of big, juicy berries. The last two years have been terrible; in fact, this year, I think he estimated we sold only 40 gallons. There haven't been many berries to pick, in part because the weather has been hot and dry during the late summer when the plants set their blossoms for the next season's crop (anyway, that's what we were told by a friend who is a horticulturalist). And of course, the past two summers have been just unimaginably hot for long periods of time, meaning we are also losing some plants.

Of course, crops are dependent on weather, but raising animals has its challenges, too. There are always the normal problems like disease or accidents (last summer we had a lamb that just disappeared - we think a coyote got him), but this year there is a new challenge - feeding the animals. The lack of rain during the spring means pastures have almost no grass. Not just no green grass; there are places where the ground is literally bare. That means there also is no grass to cut for hay. Since there is no grass for the animals to eat now, we have to feed them something, so we are doing a mix of hay (not much, since we have to have it for winter) and grain ($9 per bag, but cheaper than a bale of hay...especially as hay becomes scarcer in the area). We're also trying to make use of whatever else is available. We are pulling up everything but the tomatoes in the garden and giving it to the sheep and cows. The cows love the dry cornstalks. The sheep seem partial to the grasshopper-riddled brussels sprout leaves. Yesterday, I started pulling up the lima bean plants, even though they still are green and have leaves; not only is the weather dry, but we've also had a recent infestation of blister beetles. The lima beans probably won't produce anything anyway, and I'd rather the cows have them than the blister beetles.  I feel especially sorry for the two horses. We don't give them any of the "special treats," since horses have such delicate stomachs and get colic so easily. But they stand at the fence and watch while we are giving the cows the extras, and I can almost see their depression, ha.

There is also another worry that made me think of The Edge of Time--fire danger. One of the plot events in that book is a wildfire on the Texas prairie, and I remember thinking what a scary thing it would be to be in the line of a fire driven by winds. We are under a burn ban, and fireworks were banned for Fourth of July celebrations, but there have still been several outbreaks of fire in the past couple of weeks. One fire threatened the home of some friends from church; the woman had to evacuate the house with just a little notice. Fortunately (providentially), the winds shifted as the fire reached their property line, so their home was untouched. However, I think there were a couple of other homes that were destroyed in that fire. The fire danger is not something I worry about to the point of obsessing, but it's one more nagging little worry in this whole cluster of worries brought on by this drought.

Still, I wouldn't want to live any other way. And I think that's why I'm wanting to re-read these two books at this point. Despite the hardships of living on a farm, both hardships brought on by weather and by lack of money, Laura and Bethany both come to appreciate the land and its promise. As Laura said at the end of The First Four Years,

It would be a fight to win out in this business of farming, but strangely she felt her spirit rising for the struggle. The incurable optimism of the farmer who throws his seed on the ground every spring, betting it and his time against the elements, seemed inextricably to blend with the creed of her pioneer forefathers that "it is better farther on"--only instead of farther on in space, it was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon of the west.

It rained last night for the first time in over a month. This morning when I was hanging out the jeans, I thought I saw a little green in the grass that wasn't there yesterday. Maybe I'm imagining it, or maybe it's really there. But between that and reading these stories, I think I'll mentally make it through this drought

A Little Touch of Melancholy

You know how you wait and wait for something, and finally it's here, and then you go through it as slowly as you can, trying to make it last as long as possible? Well, that's where I've been the past week or so with the last of Ann Turnbull's Quaker trilogy, Seeking Eden. And as is often the case after some much-anticipated event is over, I'm suffering a little touch of melancholy, for a variety of reasons.

The first reason, of course, is because it's over. There will be no more stories about Susanna and Will or their children. That makes me sad because I love those characters and because the time period (late 17th century) is so interesting. Turnbull's books are so well-written that I felt myself drawn into the world of the book and truly invested in the character's lives. Seeking Eden seemed a little slower to get going than the other two books in the trilogy (No Shame, No Fear and Forged in the Fire), but somewhere in the middle of the book, I became so caught up in the story I finished the whole thing in one sitting. So much for my plans to make it last by drawing it out!

Another thing that makes me sad is knowing this excellent book has, as we say here in the South, a hard row to hoe to find an audience. Candlewick, the publisher that created the US editions of the other two books, declined to publish this one, even though the story takes place in Philadelphia. A quick check of Amazon's website showed Seeking Eden is not available directly through Amazon in the US; one can, however, get it through one of Amazon's associated sellers. I had to get the book through Amazon UK, which meant shipping charges were more than the price of the book (worth every penny, though). And then I see the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy as an Amazon bestseller, and I just get angry. I suppose now we're going to see a whole slew of knock-offs of that book (which is a knock-off of Twilight) on the publishers' menu for the next couple of years. It's not that I think Fifty Shades of Grey shouldn't be published; if people want to read it, fine. But it really does make me angry and sad that high-quality, substantive books like Seeking Eden are squeezed out of the marketplace and become less and less available for people like me who have zero interest in Fifty Shades of Grey and its progeny.

Finally, I have to admit that one of my first reactions immediately after finishing Seeking Eden was a sense of   depression (sort of) because I realize my own writing just doesn't measure up. One of the things I appreciate about the story is how smoothly Turnbull balances so many different elements. There is the family story of 16-year-old Josiah's conflict with his parents, particularly his father (did Turnbull have spy cams on our 16-year-old son? ha ha). There is the love story between Jos and Kate. There is a wealth of historical information, ranging from details about the persecution of Quakers in the New World as well as the old, the early years of Philadelphia, apprenticeships, the slave trade, slave auctions, and slavery, including the fact that Quakers at that time owned slaves. Then there is the overarching moral conflict Jos faces - should he break his contract with his master in order to follow a higher law? And that's not everything - the book is so rich and so jam-packed with good stuff. Yet it maintains the flow of a good story, building up to a point where I felt tense with nervousness about what would happen.

I hope I'm being too hard on myself, but I definitely had that sinking feeling that my own story was a lightweight, fluffy little love story compared to Seeking Eden. Nothing's wrong with fluffy little love stories, but my goal for writing is to go beyond that. I want to write things that are both entertaining and thought-provoking. I want my stories to say something important about humanity. (Gosh, that sounds pretentious...but maybe you know what I mean.) Of course, I must remind myself, I've written one book and Ann Turnbull has written many. Maybe I can get there someday.

But I'll never get there if I don't find a way to work writing time into my daily schedule. I thought summer vacation would free me from the grind of teaching and grading - no, it's only replaced the grind of teaching with a different grind. If I'm going to write, I'm going to have to forcibly grab some time and guard it selfishly, which won't be easy and which the family probably won't understand. Another reason to feel melancholy....

Getting Old Sucks

In about six weeks, I'm going to be hitting the age 50 milestone. This post is not whining about that. I actually am not especially bothered by the idea of being 50; despite the inconvenience of things like reading glasses and that nagging 10 pounds that won't go away and possible hearing aids (bad, bad heredity, unfortunately), I don't feel too much different than I did at age 30.

However, a couple of things I've read recently have made me think about what is (probably) coming down the line in my life - not in the next year, maybe not even in the next 10 years, but eventually, if I live long enough. Those two converging works are The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks and an unpublished memoir manuscript I am reading for the sister of a friend.

I certainly didn't go into reading The Notebook expecting to start thinking about aging. To be honest, I wanted to read it as "market research" to give me an idea of what kind of romantic books (beyond "romance novels") are popular with readers. (And to keep being honest, I didn't particularly care for this book. If you are interested, there will be a brief explanation of why at the end of this post.)

Not to give away any plot points, but The Notebook is a story within a story, about the same people at two different points in their lives. One story is about the rekindling of their teen romance when they are in their late 20s/early 30s; the other is about their lives now that they are living in a senior care facility of some kind. Allie, the woman in the story, has Alzheimer's disease to the point that she rarely recognizes her husband, Noah, the love of her life. Noah, however, remains devoted to her, and in fact, courts her so she will fall in love with him each day after forgetting him from the day before.

I'm not going to say much about the second book, since I don't have permission from the author to talk about it. It is the story of the struggles a family faced when they had to deal with their aging father's dementia by committing him to senior care against his will when he was clearly unable to take care of himself any longer but wouldn't admit it. It's a very compelling story, and I hope the author will be able to get her story out for the public to read someday in the future.

Although we don't really want to think about it, as we get older, chances are that we are going to be faced with substantial loss. For some of us, as in The Notebook, that loss may be of our most significant human relationship, either through death or to dementia. For others, it may be loss of freedom and control of our own destiny, as in the manuscript. For some, it may be both.

I was thinking after reading The Notebook how sad it would be to lose all the memories built up during the years of a relationship (which is, of course, why there was a notebook in the first place). I suppose you wouldn't really lose your own memories of the relationship if it was the partner who suffered the dementia, but it seems to me some of the value in memories is their sharedness. I think about some of the things that have happened in the 23 years I've been married, like the year we spent together in graduate school in Kansas, or building our house, or the birth of our kids. Of course, we both have our personal memories of those things, but there are certain elements that have become so intertwined that the story doesn't seem complete unless both sides are told. Even the telling of the story is often intertwined. How lonely would it be to have one piece of that story gradually disappear so that there's only a ghost of it left?

To lose one's partner to dementia would certainly be lonely, but the manuscript tells a story that is sadder, in a way. The father in the story has always been a very independent, resourceful, in-charge kind of man; as he grows older, however, he begins to do things (like get lost while driving) that are dangerous to himself and to others. His children have to wrest away from him all the trappings of independent life - his car, his house, his ability to come and go as he pleases. (Of course, this process is agonizing for them as well.) I'm not completely finished with the manuscript yet, but I know from talking to my friend that the process was very painful for all of them. Think about it; most of us are so used to being able to direct our own daily affairs that it would be incredibly frustrating to have that taken away. In some ways, it would be to lose one's very self.

I think about my grandfather who recently died. He stayed in his own home until the end and died in his own bed, which I imagine most of us would aspire to. However, I've always told people he was able to do that because his children were all close by and worked together to make it possible for him to have that life. The manuscript author pointed out something else that is necessary: the willingness to accept the help one needs. That's something her father was not willing to admit, and that's part of what made the process for him so difficult. I also now believe that's one reason Grandpa was able to do what he did. Even if it meant losing his dignity as the "father," he was willing to pay that cost to be able to stay home. I don't know that you can have both dignity AND self-determination. In all probability, you can't have either. Getting old sucks.

As I transition into my "senior years" (I actually joined AARP the other day so we could get the discounts on hotels on our recent family trip, ha ha), I'm not going to dwell on getting old. But I think it is important to do two things to get ready for what could be coming: 1) get those memories down in tangible form somewhere (like Grandma's memory book from my earlier post), and 2) develop the willingness to recognize when I need help and to be able to swallow my pride to accept it.

As promised, a brief review of The Notebook: For all the pathos of the situation, I didn't really develop any emotional connection with any of the characters. There were also a number of things Sparks did that I see over and over labeled as characteristics of weak writing: head-hopping and "telling" rather than "showing," among others. Finally, Sparks' techniques for trying to build suspense just drove me nuts. The end of the book was especially frustrating. Did Noah die, or not? 

A Thin Connection to Life 100 Years Past

Here's what we had for supper, all from our farm - sauteed collard greens, boiled new potatoes, broiled yellow squash, fresh green beans, and blueberries. I'm not trying to gloat, honest; these  veggies remind me of something I was thinking about yesterday.

We just returned from a little family vacation down in Texas. One of the unplanned stops was at the Lyndon B. Johnson State and National Park site near Johnson City. I'm glad we stopped, because there was quite a bit of historical information there (and the countryside in which the ranch is located is lovely in sort of a desolate way). But my favorite part was the Sauer-Beckman Living History Farm.

The farm is a replica of a German settler's farm from about 100 years ago, the period between 1912-1918. The exhibit includes the barn and all the outbuildings for livestock (including a hog pen with a HUGE sow and a hen house complete with three setting hens), a garden, a windmill and water tank, and the house itself, which consisted of three parts - a working/canning kitchen, the regular kitchen, and the sleeping/living area. (My husband and I had different explanations for our daughter about why the house was in three parts - he said it was so the sleeping quarters were separated from the kitchen in case the wood stove caught fire; I said it was because the kitchen would generate so much heat. I think we are both right!)

One thing I really liked about the exhibit is that we were able to walk around and look at things as we wanted to - there was not a pre-set tour with a guide giving us a canned speech. We could lift the dishcloth over the sourdough starter and peek in on it, we could touch the pieces of harness hanging in the tack room in the barn, we could look inside the outhouse (a two-holer. I can't imagine why anyone would want a two-hole outhouse, ha ha). There was a woman dressed in period costume at the exhibit, but she seemed to be there more as a resource to answer any questions; other than greeting us pleasantly, she didn't say anything to us, just kept working with the beets she obviously had pulled from the garden earlier in the day.

As you can imagine, this was absolute heaven for a writer of historical fiction set on a frontier farm! I could have stayed for hours, no lie, looking at every tool in the barn and every dish in both kitchens. But I had to be considerate of the rest of the family, who are not quite as into this as I am.

As I walked around the grounds, I began to realize that while this was history, some of it was also simply living for me. Except for the fact that I'm using electricity rather than firewood as a heat source, I'm still doing a lot of food preservation, just like the matron of the farm would have been doing 100 years ago. With only a few exceptions, most of what I "put up" for winter comes from our own garden. We have only a couple of hens, not a whole lot, but we do get eggs from them most days. I also still have memories of "helping" (as much as a kid can do) on hog butchering day, with the big cast iron washtub rendering down lard. I also remember the bowls of fresh milk sitting out on the cabinets at my grandparents' house waiting for cream to rise to the top, I'm lucky to have those memories; in the coming years of my life, there are going to be fewer and fewer people who will have seen those kinds of things.

Of course, there are a lot of differences between the few things I do and the daily life of a farmer's wife 100 years ago. I am spoiled by the convenience and safety of pasteurized milk and by the softness of store-bought bread. But something as simple as having a meal filled with vegetables that my husband and I planted and harvested, cleaned and cooked, helps me feel there's still something of a connection with those hard-working people in the past, small as it may be.

First in the Hearts of His Countrymen

As I've grown older, I've really come to recognize how inadequate history classes in school are. I'm not trying to be snarky; it's just that history is so "thick" and filled with so many details there is absolutely no way a person can learn much more than the basics of names, dates, and places. That's one reason I like to tackle some historical nonfiction once in a while to go along with my favored diet of historical fiction. My latest was Joseph Ellis' biography of George Washington, His Excellency.

Shortly after beginning this book, I realized I knew very little about George Washington. Sure, I knew he was the commander in chief for the Continental Army and the first constitutional president of the United States. I'd heard the story about how he thwarted the mutiny of the Newburgh Conspiracy by using his spectacles and a sentimental reference to his advancing age. But I didn't have much of an understanding of the amazing human being that was behind all those accomplishments. While Ellis' biography isn't as focused on George Washington the human being as say, The Unexpected George Washingtion: His Private Life by Harlow Giles Unger, Ellis does give some analysis of Washington's psychology. (I borrowed both of these books from a friend and while I'd like to read the Unger book, it took me 2 1/2 months - YES - to read the Ellis book. I'm ready to get back to some fiction! And I want to return the books to the friend. Maybe I'll get to Unger some time in the future.)

I'm not going to go into everything I found interesting about Washington's life (although I had no idea he was a smallpox survivor and how that played a strategic role in the American Revolution). To keep this post short and sweet, I'll just focus on two things that gave me new respect for Washington: his planned solution to the problem of frontier settlement and Indian rights to the land, and his determination to somehow, eventually free his slaves.

Probably because I am working on a story which is centered around the conflict over land between the Cherokee and white settlers, I paid special attention to the section of the book that talked about Washington's plans as president to deal with the Indians. Ellis points out Washington firmly believed the nation's future lay in expanding into the interior of the continent, which meant there had to be some policy for dealing with the peoples who were already there. Unlike many officials (especially Andrew Jackson later), Washington respected the Indians as "familiar and formidable adversaries fighting for their own independence; in effect, behaving pretty much as he would do in their place." That view led him to come up with a policy of creating Indian "homelands" that would house the tribes as foreign nations with which the United States would interact just as they would with the nations of Europe. Washington was apparently opposed to confiscation of Indian lands, which he believed would "stain the character of the nation." Unfortunately, early on, the state of Georgia ignored Washington's Treaty of New York with the Creek Nation and sold more than 15 million acres that would have been the Creek homeland to a land speculating company. As Ellis pointed out, "Eventually Washington was forced to acknowledge his vision...could not be enforced." He may have had a magnanimous attitude toward Native Americans, but not enough people shared his view - or too many were too greedy for land to care.

I also found it interesting to follow Ellis' discussion of how Washington gradually moved from oblivious slave owner (oblivious to the rights of slaves, that is) to a man who freed his slaves in his will. Ellis spends considerable time discussing the development of Washington's moral stance on slavery; although Washington came to see slavery as in contrast with the democratic principles he fought for in the revolution, he was still constrained by his vision of economic security. Part of the problem was that he didn't have full control of all the slaves; more than half of his slaves actually belonged to the dowry that came with Martha on their marriage and he couldn't free them without paying their value to the estate (which he obviously wasn't willing to do). Part of the problem was also that Washington felt strongly the new nation couldn't survive the political battles that would break out if he as president made moves to eliminate slavery. Ellis notes how complicated the slavery question was for Washington, who had a strong commitment to avoid breaking up slave families by selling slaves and who continued to support all the slaves even when it didn't work economically for Mount Vernon. I suppose we could condemn Washington's position on slavery by saying he waited until he was dead and would no longer need their services to give his slaves their freedom. However, I look  at it this way - Washington was the only one of the slave-owning Founding Fathers who actually did anything about slavery, even if it came after his death. And his will didn't simply throw the slaves as free blacks out into the world; Washington allotted funds to provide care for the older or sick slaves for the remainder of their lives, and he called for the younger slaves to be taught to read and to do some kind of trade before being freed completely at age 25. And he was serious about it; his will included the following statement: "see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place without evasion, neglect or delay."

Even though it took me a long time to read the book, it was not because the book was boring or poorly-written. I thought it hit a good balance between giving an overview of the many significant events of Washington's life and of the motivations and personality of the man who lived those events. I'm glad I read it, and I'm glad to have more flesh put on the paper cutout figure of Washington that I had from studying American history in school.

Food for Thought, or Thoughts about Food

Since the weather was cloudy and cooler when I went out to feed the cats this morning, and since I had promised three gallons of blueberries to a couple of ladies at church sometime soon, I decided to go out and pick those berries this morning. Well, the weather didn't stay cloudy and cooler for long, and the berries are very thin this year, so it took me all morning to get the three gallons. Normally, I would have to come in from the patch and get something ready for lunch, but today Lily came out around 11:00-ish and asked if it was ok if she made cream of potato soup. I was hot and tired and soup didn't really appeal to me, but I didn't want to be that mother who squishes all her child's ideas, so I said "sure." It crossed my mind that Lily has never made cream of potato soup before, but I was still about a gallon away from being finished, so I didn't let it concern me. As long as she didn't burn down the house.....

I finished my picking at 11:45 and came in to find three bowls of potato soup waiting and a very proud young cook. She had used the good old Better Homes & Garden cookbook, but when the soup didn't taste quite right, she added some pepper on her own (I guess watching all that Food Network with her father came in handy!). We supplemented with leftovers, and it was a very nice lunch. Let me tell you, I was very grateful to have lunch waiting. And I was impressed when I found she had made a white sauce as a base for the soup all by herself. White sauce is not the easiest thing in the world to make, and she had never done it before. Good for Lily!

One of the leftovers I had to go along with the soup were some cornbread pancakes I made for supper last night. I didn't even warm them up, just spread some margarine on top. They went well with the soup. But that's not why I'm telling you about them. Now don't laugh at me, but one of the by-products of writing historical fiction for me has been a desire to learn how people used to live. More than "learn" in an intellectual sense - I want to be able to learn by experience (as long as I'm not giving up electricity for an extended period of time, lol). One of the things I became very aware of while writing my book was how limited people's diets were on the 19th century frontier. Throughout the book, my characters are living on cornpone and salt pork. (I know there would have been other foods available to them, especially seasonally, but I imagine cornmeal and pork were the staples of the menu for working-class people.) Last night, inspired in part by the Hatfield/McCoy movie on the History Channel, I decided to make a batch of cornbread pancakes, also known as johnnycakes.

I had tried them before with a Betty Crocker recipe and found them to be greasy and not very good, but this time I found a different recipe online that turned out much better. They were easy, easy to make. This recipe made flat little cakes with a slightly sweet taste and enough body to them to stand up to butter and sorghum molasses. They were just as good today without being warmed up, and they were plenty filling.

The experience of making and eating these cornbread pancakes gave me some valuable insight into an aspect of everyday life in the 19th century. These pancakes were made with simple ingredients and were so easy to mix up and cook on a griddle that a busy wife or mother could throw together lunch quickly, even if she was tired from working in the field or garden. The recipe made probably 12 pancakes, so it would be enough to feed a fairly good-sized family. They could be stacked and eaten as pancakes, or they were thin and flexible enough they could be used to wrap around a piece of meat (much like a tortilla). And if the work to be done was out in a field far enough away from the house that it would take too much time to come back home for lunch, the johnnycakes hold over well, would taste good cold, and would be easy to eat picnic-style.

It's a small thing, I suppose, but I like learning that kind of information. Sure, history is about the big things like wars and treaties and elections, but it's also about the little, day-to-day things like filling one's stomach.

There was also another interesting little side path Lily and I talked about over lunch. I was putting sorghum on my cornbread pancakes, and Lily asked why I called it "sorghum" when the jar says "molasses." Well, I didn't know, so we looked it up. "Sorghum" is the genus name for the plant which has the sap that is cooked down to make the syrup; "molasses" is "a syrup made from boiling down sweet vegetable or fruit juice." So to be technically correct, we should always call it "sorghum molasses."

This was a very educational lunch!

In case you want to experiment with the cornbread pancakes, here's the recipe (from Allrecipes.com):

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (I didn't have buttermilk, so I used the old trick to use vinegar to sour the milk)
2 large eggs
3 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled

Mix dry ingredients together, then mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add wet ingredients to dry and blend well until the batter is smooth. Cook the pancakes on a hot griddle until golden-brown on each side.