Opting for 'sticks' made with stone-ground white corn meal, baking soda, buttermilk, eggs and maple bacon grease for carmelization...and flavor....they're wonderful, when made with cornmeal, eggs and a can of creamed corn, also....light, sweeter, with a crispy exterior and creamier interior......I've never liked dense, grainy cornsticks very much......we had cracklings in yellow cornbread, baked in a heavy, buttered iron skillet, when I was very young....but, I like airier bread, now......with a crunchy skin...

I couldn't resist...not that I wanted to.....a couple of Kroger 'mark downs'.....$1.99 for a huge bag of collard greens and $2.49 for a pound of hickory-smoked bacon......I cooked the greens in chicken stock, adding lots of chopped scallions, pomegranate liquor, ground peppers, Cajun seasoned salt, pulverized raisins, tobasco sauce, chopped garlic, rice wine vinegar, Mexican Valentina salsa picante and the tiny bits of honey-roasted cashew nuts that were left at the bottom of a bag......something that my grandmother would never have considered, of course...... thick, Prelibato red vinegar was dizzled over the cooked concoction......I decided to serve them with feather-light old-fashioned white cornmeal corn sticks, carmelized in the old Martin Stamping and Stove cast iron cornstick mold.......Now, I wish that I had made some black-eyed peas to accompany this N. Alabama-ish afternoon treat..

THEN, I DID   

North Alabama afternoon 'snack'..... 2 1/2" yellow cornmeal muffins, made with dissicated spicy okra, stone-ground cornmeal, egg, diced white onion, buttermilk and clarified butter......piled high with pinto bean paste, flavored with hot peppers and smoked paprika.....sprinkled with scallion slices........a bit 'hotter' and lighter than the plainer version that my Grandmother made......in her old Martin Stamping and Stove cast iron skillet, slathered with bacon drippings......