We are in for a solid run of global warming winter, with sub-zero daytime highs, and a night temp on Wednesday to come of about -25. Looking at 6-8” of snow, Sunday evening into Monday morning. Stiff winds out of the Northwest will make for unpleasant outdoor conditions next week.

Good heavens. What to do?

Chilli, of course:




Hamburger, ground pork, chuck steak, poblanos, Anaheim’s, bell peppers, oregano, masa heraina, and some other stuff. It is not overly hot tasting, white guy chilli, I guess.



Johnny cake (cornbread) in cast iron, the only way Johnny cake should be attempted. I prefer it over charcoal, but, that wasn’t in the cards this evening:



I have a honey/butter concoction that goes on the Johnny cake. The beer is a Brazilian import, sort of a wheaty pale that would offend no one. It was good with dinner.



Hope you guys are warm, and eating well.

Best,
Ted

Funny, we are having the same weather, same dinner.

Good looking supper ........... bad sounding weather.

SRH

I waited until just before dark to run the dog for a few miles, trying to beat the wind. -1 is not too bad, if there is no wind.

It worked. The wind died down to nothing at dark. Good run, no birds to be seen, although I did see their tracks in the snow.

The wife and I have conspired to keep chilli, pasoli, stew, and a variety of bread on the dinner menu this week.

Gas in the snow blower, the garage furnace keeps the shop at 40 degrees (vehicles that start and run are a good thing) we are ready.

Best,
Ted

Ted;
Don't in any way take this wrong, A mighty fine looking supper, except I would just go with a cup of water, or coffee since you aren't making it very Hot.
However, that cornbread is not JohnnyCake, it's way too thick for that.

Here is a description I found for JohnnyCake;
"Johnnycake is a cornmeal flatbread. An early American staple food, it is prepared on the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Jamaica. The food originates from the native inhabitants of North America. Wikipedia
Place of origin: United States of America
Alternative names: Jonnycake, shawnee cake, hoecake, johnny cake, journey cake, and johnny bread
Main ingredient: Cornmeal."

Notice the term "FlatBread". One, of course, does not have to be on the coast to enjoy it, I've been eating JohnnyCakes for about 80 years now, likely didn't eat any my first year of life. Here in TN though, we always called them Hoe Cakes, either way, they were less than half as thick as the bread in your picture. Folk-Lore has it in slave days they would take some cornmeal & a jar of Sorghum to the field with them. Come lunchtime they would build a fire in the corner of the field & heat their hoe over it to fry their Hoe Cakes, which they then smeared with the Sorghum. For that meal, I'd even be willing, old as I am, to chop some weeds out of a Cotton Field.

As I write this, -25F with -36F wind chill.
Um.... good to be inside.
Did a little in the shop, also at 40F

Miller,
The recipe for the bread came from the next door neighbor to my parents, when I was a boy. He was a member of the White Earth band of Indians, lived on the reservation most of his life, and moved back late in life. That is what he called it. I was born on the East coast, and moved here as a child.
I don’t doubt there is flat cornbread called Johnnycake. I also know this guy, were he still alive, would call what I made the same thing. Unless you tried to make it in a pan that wasn’t cast iron, in which case he would have called it shit.
No coffee after 2:00pm or so for me, it makes me fidget in bed. Beer is water. I drink at least one per day.

Today, I will have two.

Best,
Ted

Can you imagine how cold it would be if we didn't have some of that "global warming"?

70 and sunny here today. Dinner in the oven now, roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary, oryx burgers with shallots and melted cheddar, bottle of cheap Shiraz. Takes the chill off. Winter is just brutal.

Where is "here", Replacement?

Ted;
I am in 100% agreement with you on the cast iron. In my part of the world though we made JohnnyCakes on a cast iron Griddle & Cornbread in a skillet.
When my Dad & Mom married Dad's mother gave Mom a griddle which had the handle broken off. Mom lived to 93 & never had another griddle. I still have it though my Wife & I found another with the handle intact prior to getting Mom's so we don't use it that much now. These griddles are round with a diameter of 10 inches & a shallow wall around them no more than 3/8" deep. To make the "Hoe Cakes" we pour a ladle of batter on & let it spread to about ¼" thick brown it & flip & brown the other side. Many recipes for these call for only corn meal & water, but we generally use some milk & an egg.
We also make potato cakes from leftover mashed potatoes essentially the same way.

All I have ever known or read on the subject was there were essentially three classes of cornbread based on their thickness. The thinnest was the Johnny or hoecakes, next up was pone bread & then the thickest was Skillet bread.

Today, I am in the wilds of Riverside County, Southern California. The politics suck, but the weather is tolerable. I did not hunt today, but the guys in our blind shot limits of teal and divers. Oh, the horror of it all.

Sounds like mighty good bird hunting. I doubt if I would really like winter like you have, but then again, you have duck hunting and we have ice. Oh well, it's been a good time to clear the oxbow to hunt next year.

Ted,

Those temps can sure be really rough on man and machine alike. But they're good for making hard water! I don't usually keep fish, but my buddy felt like he wanted to have a perch and pickerel dinner after a long day on the ice, so we kept a few. I don't have any pictures of his dinner, but the cheddar/pork smoked sausage on the ice was wonderful.

Good lookin' eats, amigos- The Johnny Cake "debate" recalls a joke-- something to break the grasp of "cabin fever" here in MI I guess- river frozen over, all the resident geese have moved South- so our MI "late bonus" season it Kaput I guess.

Billy comes home from school, at the supper table his father asks him: "Well, son, what did you learn about today?" "Pop, we learned about mathematics-- you know, like Pie Are Square"-- Billy's father thinks for a moment, and says: "Humm- well that can't be right. Any fool knows that Pie Are Round, Johnnycake Are Square!" RWTF

Ted,
I'm with 2-piper, in Alabama we call them hoe cakes also. Your photo was of good looking cornbread. My mother didn't have a griddle so she cooked hoe cakes in the bottom of the same skillet she cooked corn bread in. Sometimes the children call them fried corn bread, but their mother knows they want hoecakes. We eat them at any meal( they are faster than corn bread), but at breakfast we usually eat them with butter and good thick cane syrup. BTY I like corn bread with my chili also, but a different recipe, and the chili is different too. Chili is like Gumbo, there are as many recipes as cooks, and they are all good.
Mike

Ted, I hope you won't mind one more diversion from your original post but the corn bread terminology posts have my memory working overtime. I was raised in a very southern home in the very deep south and we spoke with very deep southern accents using old southern dialogues. We kids were always confused about johnny cake, hoe cakes, pone and corn bread. It seems the definition of each varied buy the age of the speaker and the area you were raised in. What you have prepared would have been a hoe cake of pone. If baked, it would have been corn bread. If fried, it would have been a hoe cake and about one half inch thick. Johnny cakes were made with flour or corn meal (in my generation equal amounts of both) and fried just like a pan cake.

My grand mother died in the 1970's at past 100 years old. Her mother told her johnny cakes were so named because they were a staple fed to Confederate soldiers during the war of Northern Aggression.

The Old South is pretty much dead and gone but some of the customs are worthy of resurrection, such as lynching. It should, however, be reserved for and used only in the most severe cases- such as anyone caught putting sugar in corn bread! Just the thought of it makes my blood boil and my soul scream for revenge!

Miller,
A skillet like this?



I should have bought stock in the Lodge Co. I have a ton of the stuff. I do not use this one often, and I mostly use it on the charcoal grille for smoking chillis and vegetables that I want grilled. My roots don’t extend very far south, and I wouldn’t have thought to put corn batter of any type in it, or, fry same.

Cary, if I’m in a hurry, I’ll use a box of mix. There is corn and wheat flower in my cupboard, and I know how to use them. I do mix about equal parts heated honey and butter, and drizzle it on cornbread. Bad habit, I guess, but, I like cream in my coffee, also.

I haven’t ice fished in years, but, have my doctorate in same. We wouldn’t keep a northern unless he was big enough to allow for easy removal of the Y bones, or we were going to pickle them in Silver Satin wine.

Perch might be the best fish swimming.

Have to run the dog and visit my disabled Mom and Brother, today.

It is still cold.

Best,
Ted

I always appreciate the members here taking the time to open their front door and invite us in- thanks Ted. I shoulda known there would be a difference of opinion on the proper label for cornbread, primarily based on its thickness it would seem. That's not a staple where I hail from, but I always learn something here, and I wish I had one percent of the knowledge Miller has.

It does remind me of an experience a couple decades ago when my son and I were on our second pheasant hunt together. We had settled in at a small wobbly table in the only diner in a one stoplight town in SW Kansas. Two locals in overalls were nursing an always full cup of jet black motor oil, politely but firmly entrenched in their disagreement on the low temperature for that morning. It was a difference of one degree. I noticed that my son was also listening to the debate, as each contestant presented his case, wholly assured of its veracity and validity. Then one of them pulled out his ace in the hole, an empirical trump card to force his friend to fold:

"Clem, you know the official town temperature is taken from the thermometer on the old silo on Main, and it read 18 degrees." He settled back almost imperceptibly in his chair, a slight grin starting to escape from one corner of his mouth.

Clem stared impassively as his cup was brought from "add" to "full." Without looking up, he replied in a cold monotone, "True enough, Joe- but that thermometer is 65 feet off the ground." I turned to see an eye squeezing smile covering my son's face.

Mike

Good one Mike!!

And, BTW, pickled pickerel in 1" cubes are fantastic! And the pickling dissolves any and all bones.

Good tip! thank you sir...

Good eating what ever you call it. Growing up on a farm, cold days of working outdoors were often ended with a good pot of bean soup with a ham bone in it or a pot of potatoes and corned beef in a hash. All with fresh bread, biscuits or corn bread. The hard crust or corners were all extra special.

The line in the sand between far northern American cuisine, and far Southern American cuisine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk

The government offered free land to settlers in what is now the Bounday Waters Wilderness area, in northern MN. If you have ever been there, you understand something the government clearly did not, it is not farm country.
The Fins and the Swedes understood how to shoot moose, and chop a hole in the ice to fish.
Everyone else who went, died a miserable death in the winter.
Then, the policy of free land, in that part of Minnesota,for settlers, ended.

I like lutefisk. Moose, too.

Best,
Ted

Johnny cakes in Alabama has been covered - I was 8 years old when my 94 year old great aunt then living in Birmingham (About the time Adlai Stevenson ran for President with Sparkman on the ticket), told us kids about the Yankees coming into Selma and her family having to hide the silver in the well.

But Moose in Minnesota? Time to repost this. Caused 16 accidents - they were arrested - Alcohol was involved:

Bread made with cornmeal comes in a bunch of forms and goes by a bunch of regional names. Hushpuppy, cornbread, and all the regional names for the different forms are all good with me. Cornmeal mixed with the flour to batter the fish might even be another form of bread. Deep pan cornbread often comes cooked with a whole chicken or even a duck cooked in the middle of it for flavor.

Personally, I'm always a little disappointed if there are no cracklins in the mix...Geo

What I wanna know is ...........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgOo9a-Jk78

SRH

Ted; Yes, that's it. Here is how Lodge catalogs it;

Lodge 10.5 Inch Cast Iron Griddle. Pre-seasoned Round Cast Iron Pan Perfect for Pancakes, Pizzas, and Quesadillas.
by Lodge
10.5 Inch SeasonedCast Iron Griddle. The Lodge Cast Iron Griddle delivers heavy-duty performance, with lower side walls and a wider cooking surface. Great for the stovetop, campfire or oven.

It's perfect for Hoe Cakes also. As another stated the Hoe Cakes are always fried, Cornbread goes in the oven The one I use now is a Lodge, the old one from my Grandmother with the broken handle is unmarked. My Wife & I are both great believers in cast iron, we Have Skillets, Griddles, Bean Pots/Dutch Ovens, Camp Dutch Ovens, Waffle Irons (One by the Stover Engine Co). We also have both 6 & 12 pocket pans which make fluted dome-shaped cornbread muffins. little corn-stick pans, A divided cornbread skillet which makes 8 slices of cornbread & a 7 hole biscuit pan. some Ebelskiver pans & several other items. We are pretty well covered in the cast iron line & they all get used from time to time. We make all our waffles in that Stover iron as it works well on a gas burner. I have my Mothers old waffle irons, but they only work well on a wood stove with a cap removed so they have clearance for turning.

Great sounding dinner Ted, and a great subject. Snow here tomorrow but nothing like you've been getting. Dinner tomorrow will likely be Cabernet drenched goose breasts. We normally do this with elk but have been eating elk chili lately so tried this to see how it might work. My FIL is always looking for new ways to utilize canada goose (lots in his freezer), so we're doing some testing. First day at new job tomorrow.

Congrats on the new gig, Lloyd. I know it means a lot to you. Sounds like things are on an even keel.
We actually haven’t had much snow just north of the twin cities. Way north is a different story, I hear.
I won’t even pull the trigger on a Canada these days, never can tell if the birds are eating weed killer off a golf course. Your FIL probably doesn’t get those birds.

Best,
Ted

while you guys are shivering we have had about 2 weeks of hot weather average temps have been low to mid 40's with a few days of 46
oh these temps are in celcius

An Aussie team made it here for the pond hockey tournament last week. They went from 100 degrees at home to about 5 degrees, here. I haven’t heard how they faired in the tourney, but, hopefully, well.

Best,
Ted

Yeah, the difference hey smely. I don't think I would want to put up with that weather, being a central Qld bloke.
O.M

-40 is -40 on both temp scales. And I hope we never see it here or anywhere. In 1979, while active duty, I got shipped out from 92 degrees to -15 in a single day. Frozen parts never thaw sometimes. To this day I hate cold. Never like the Middle East either with temps in the 110’s to low 120’s. Always wondered why President Jimmy Carter hated me so much sending me everywhere I did not want to go.

I’ve lived here most of my life, and have never seen -40. But, I’ve seen plenty of -25 down to about -35. If the wind isn’t blowing (it usually isn’t, at those temps) you are dressed for it and moving, it isn’t bad, for a while.
Machines of any sort get cantankerous, however.

Best,
Ted

Living here in Vt, I seen -40 several times. My truck won't start at that temperature, mostly due to the gas turning to jelly at -40.

Its not uncommon for us to get -20 to -25 without the wind chill.

I don't mind ice fishing below 0, except you have to take extra pains to keep the beer from freezing.

Mergus

Holding my own here Ted, thankyou. Stay warm up there.