Everybody living in the South should have a good cornbread recipe. I’ve tried & I’ve tried, but I’ve never been completely happy with the results. So, I switched to corn cakes–also called hoe cakes, or other nick-names. My original inspiration was having them at Halls on the River outside of Winchester Kentucky (I can’t believe I split an order of Lamb Fries with a Simpsons staff writer and they never made it into an episode), but Mine get thinner and thinner, and can also be used for my Tequila-Lime Fish & Sriracha Sauce Tacos.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup self-rising corn meal
• 1/2 cup white flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup water (more for thinner cakes)
• 1/8 cup coconut oil
• additional oil or butter for frying

Step 1: sifting: sift together the dry ingredients, the corn meal, the flour and the sugar in a bowl, or, better yet, something you can pour from.

Step 2, mixing: in a large mug or small mason jar (or whatever is handy) mix the wet ingredients, the egg, buttermilk, water, and oil.

Step 3, adding it up: add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and stir them together.

Step 4, frying: on a greased, preheated skillet on medium high heat, cook the corn cakes as you would pancakes: pour the batter out, let it cook until bubbles on top of the batter stay, flip them over and cook the other side.

After getting them out of the frying pan or off the griddle, I usually keep the warm in a toaster oven or “real” oven until I am ready to serve them. They are very good with my Red Lentil Peace Soup, or, for serving at Lenten meals, and all of the usual vital uses–it’s all love.