Don't Throw Nana (or her Jiffy cornbread) under the bus

Ok, so this blog is a follow up to the one that I wrote about cornbread. I saw Nanna at church today and immediately felt convicted. "Nanna, I threw you under the bus." She looked at me and asked, "What??" "I wrote about you and your betrayal of your Southern roots on my blog. I talked about your Jiffy cornbread." Nanna laughed. Then we had a good conversation about the issue.

Nanna reminded me that she had been a serious cornbread maker -- no Jiffy mixes for her! But she moved from Alabama to Boston. Nanna and her family were uprooted from the South. The younger generation became uprooted from homemade cornbread. Nanna talked about how she would make real cornbread, only to have it sit in its pan, uneaten. Nanna didn't much see the point in swimming against the current, so she gave in to the box, the mix, to Jiffy. With an appropriately disappointed voice, she told me that even her very own brother no longer ate homemade cornbread, but preferred Jiffy! Only Nanna and a few of her siblings (all in their 70s and 80s) have maintained their loyalty to the real deal.

I apologized to Nanna for throwing her under the bus and told her that I would correct my mistake. Nanna had not given up on real cornbread; she adjusted to the demands of those around her.

Here's to real cornbread loyalty!