This story is excerpted from a workshop conducted in Yancey County, North Carolina in 2026

RL Silvers: We lived the way down below that mountain place, and my mother’d say, “Now, RL, what you want me to fix you for dinner?” I say “fix me a quart of corn bread,” and I’d she’d fix me a quart of corn bread, and I’d take it with me on the mountain where I was working all day, and wouldn’t have to go for a mile off in her to eat dinner. I’d put that in the branch, let the water run by it. It’d be good and cold, you know, at 12, and I’d get to take a break and eat that cornbread 

Millie Lewis: you pour the milk in it. 

Shyanne Bellamy: Poor milk in the cornbread? 

Lilith Yurkin:Yeah I ate it like that. 

Millie Lewis:Yeah, milk in the cornbread. Cram the cornbread up and poured milk in it, and you could put it in a branch and that would- My daddy used to do that. We used to do that when daddy was working. 

Lilith Yurkin:My grandmother did that. Cornbread and milk is the best. 

Jack Lewis:His daughter makes cornbread over here sometimes. 

Shyanne Bellamy: Really?

Speaker 2:I think milk some of that food. 

Shyanne Bellamy:See, I grew up just eating with rice and cabbage. I’m missing out. 

Millie Lewis:Oh, you have to try cornbread and milk.