When Hubert and the other "mill hands" were working close enough to come home for the noon meal it was called dinner and usually consisted of dried beans cooked with salt pork seasoning, potatoes and another vegetable or two cooked fresh in the summer or home-canned when they were out of season, and of course big pans of cornbread. Clyde says her corn bread had a thick crisp crust that was so good the boys would almost fight over it. Dessert, was usually molasses cake or cookies, or a cobbler made from home-grown fruit. Often the evening meal consisted of leftovers from the noon meal, but it was often a challenge to cook enough at noon so there would be enough left over for supper.
My brother, Douglas, remembered the daily admonition of his grandmother as he and his uncles, Clelan and Raymond, came in after school, "Now stay out of the supper bread!" The bread was stored in the "warming oven" in the upper part of the cook stove. If the boys got into the "supper bread" she would have to build a fire and cook more bread. A lot of time could be saved if she didn’t have to cook another meal from scratch.
Since purchased bread was a rarity and yeast bread (light bread) almost as rare since the yeast had to be refrigerated, it was valued even more than homemade biscuits and corn bread. Clelan tells a story on himself to illustrate this. Most lunches sent from home for any of the families were made up of sandwiches of homemade biscuits and eggs or jam. The Brackett family ran the store and the Brackett boys sometimes brought sandwiches made from light bread. Clelan was very envious of this. He dreamed of a day when he too could have light bread sandwiches. Clelan one night was invited to spend the night with the Brackett boys and he went secretly hopeful that they would have light bread. The next morning Mrs. Brackett made biscuits for breakfast but found when she started to make lunches that she was out of light bread. She asked the boys if they would rather run to the store for a loaf of light bread or would they just as soon take biscuits. Each boy voiced his opinion and Clelan said, "I’d rather have light bread, that’s what I come for!"
An illustration of the fact that the niceties of food presentation took a back seat to substance can be seen in a lunch box story. Cleston, Claren, Clelan and Raymond were attending school. Their mother would send the lunch to school in a syrup bucket and the older boy was responsible to get it to school. At lunch time all 4 boys would gather around the bucket to see what was for lunch. One day she sent cornbread and milk in the bucket–not separate in four jars, just a bucket of milk with cornbread floating in it. They loved cornbread and milk. There they stood all ready to eat, but they did not have spoons. Soon Cleston said, "I bet there’s spoons in the bucket." He reached into the milk with his grubby little school boy fist and pulled out four spoons. They all happily ate their cornbread and milk.
Maud must have been very well organized or she wouldn’t have been able to accomplish so much. The way I remember their house, it was always clean and neat. In the afternoon she would be sitting, on the porch in the summer or the fireplace room in the winter, maybe patching or darning something, but serene and unstressed.