Cornbread and Beans

Bill Monroe wrote a song called “Lonesome Road Blues” in which a verse goes, “They feed me on cornbread and beans, lord, lord. I ain’t a-gonna be treated this way.” It is doubtful that Bill Monroe was the first to use cornbread and beans in a song lyric this way, but he gets to the point that cornbread and beans is an inexpensive meal, a staple in the antebellum Southern states. I recall being served cornbread and beans by a high school buddy’s spouse on a visit to Springfield, Illinois. I didn’t want to tell him what that meant. They divorced soon afterward.

In Big Grove Township, beans, or bean soup is a winter staple. I occasionally make bean soup and alternately serve it with biscuits or cornbread. It is a seasonal culinary marker and not a reflection of poor treatment, although I continue to like “Lonesome Road Blues.”

Cooking is a form of food processing, and without it, the dried beans would be inedible. The only processed food ingredient I used in the soup was some stock made earlier in the season from garden and pantry ends. I used corm meal in the cornbread, but it is such a basic pantry item, that we don’t consider it “processed.” This food preparation is still pretty close to the source, and eating products made with cornmeal should be okay in moderation.

When we live like we do, with labor closer to the production of everything, we become more aware of where our food comes from, and what it takes to make it. It has changed how we shop. When we go to the big grocery stores, there are lots of aisles that we do not even explore. In the frozen foods section, we seek out fruits, vegetables and several meat substitutes. I almost never go down the cereal aisle. There is usually an aisle for seasonal promotions and we never go there. We make our own greeting cards or use old ones laying around. I suppose others buy these things, but living closer to food sourcing and production frees us from this “need.”

So I’ll make cornbread and beans this season, and look forward to it. It will be a treat the first time we make it, leading, perhaps, to a second. To every thing, there is a season. We should treat ourselves right with cornbread and beans.