The above is a sample of the emotional news coming out of Michigan this morning. Best video coverage from Vic’s alma mater in Ann Arbor featured a petite young Asian student attacking another woman who was described as a “Jewish Influencer.” That is another in a cascade of modern terms we don’t claim to completely understand.

There was other stuff happening up in the Wolverine state, but our Section Leader Miles felt he needed to step in and take action to calm things down here at the Creative Section in Fairfax. And it is way too early to start Happy Hour.

The Big Deal? Our voting thankfully is done and was simple. VOTE If you haven’t. We have one member whose decision not to vote is a valid and conscious one. The rest of us voted against the two incumbents on the ballot, against the three State Constitutional Amendment Questions that want to legalize some improbable things and in favor of the two initiatives to fix the County Recreation Centers so we have safe trails to hike while we cool off from this historic panoply of events over our Summer and Fall seasons.

Deirdre offered to add some real authentic cornbread to the breakfast spread, and that is what brought us back to Ella E. Hall’s magical little recipe book from the Ann Arbor.

The contents of the book had been part of growing up when his family would visit Dean Rhoda’s home on Game Days in the football season and the lunch buffet featured spreads of soups and stews and pierogis and cornbread. Vic’s Aunt Rhoda had set up the Nursing School in the face of a world turning to global conflict and when the role of women in society was on the pivot of historic change,

Rhoda stepped up to meet the emerging needs of an America at war that needed everyone– all men and all women- to get serious. And get to work. She harnessed the energy of Ella Hall’s recipes that came partly from West Africa through the rich soil of the American South. Cornbread and biscuits were queens of the hearty sides to soak up egg yolk sand gravy.

Here are the two of the millions of ladies that helped make it work:

There was electoral confusion in the air and Miles stepped in to restore order. it seemed a reasonable assignment for a P-3 Orion ASW Mission Commander accustomed to keeping track of things moving in several directions at once.

“We’ll begin with Deirdre,” he announced.

She was already underway, riding her breakfast surfboard across a golden sea of fritters. Whether she intended to serve them or surf them remained an operational question. Coffee was available to anyone willing to stay on the beach.

It had been a weekend of falls: forward, falling back, and wondering which clock someone had remembered to change. The extra hour had been absorbed without leaving any detectable surplus of rest.

Now came a partly cloudy Monday before THE ELECTION.

“The outlook calls for rain Wednesday,” Miles continued. “That should glue us indoors with the televisions flickering our fate for the next couple of years.”

“Assuming they’ve finished counting,” Rocket said.

Deirdre brought her board around for another pass. “Then we ought to eat first.”

That proposal carried without objection.
Vic and Holly’s Michigan tradition would have a place at the table, with Ella Hall’s corn bread ready to join the proceedings. There was comfort in a recipe whose ingredients could be counted, mixed, and put in the oven with a reasonable expectation of an answer in twenty minutes.

Miles surveyed the Galley. Plates were moving. Coffee was pouring. Deirdre appeared to be approaching shore.

For the moment, order had been restored. And there is another warm batch of Ella E. Hall’s legendary cornbread to go with the bacon, eggs, fritters and black rifle coffee to get the Day Before rolling. if you have not voted, it is going to be a little easier today than tomorrow. And likely dryer. We here at Socotra House are ready! Care for a wedge of….

Corn Bread from Ella E. Hall’s Notebook?

ingredients (measurements expanded for readability):

¾ cup Bob’s Red Mill Organic Medium Grind Cornmeal
1¼ cups Swans Down Regular Cake Flour
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg
½ tablespoon melted butter

Deirdre Note; Ella recorded ingredients only. She had learned the assembly techniques all her life in the kitchen. For modern trials, our sources at the University of Michigan Library’s Juli McLoone mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately, combined them, and baked the batter in a greased 8-inch-square pan at 400°F for 20 minutes. This recipe uses melted butter. Another suggestion is cubing chilled butter for the mixture which lends nice buttery layer sthrough the rich maize color of the cornbread batter.

Our thanks to the U of M Press editor Jessica Kenyatta Walker and Susan Wineberg, whose introductory essays in the modern text place Hall’s collection in context and provides a context for how SE Michigan developed into a manufacturing center that was Arsenal of Democracy, then a Rust Belt miasma of strife and now a center of gravity in a shifting demographic.

Our thanks to The University of Michigan Library’s Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive; and Juli McLoone for sharing and testing the corn bread recipe before Deridre would let it be done down here, back in Virginia where it arrived from across the waves!

Copyright 225 Vic Socotra
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