Old school Columbians all have a story about Tapp's department store and though I'm only 30 I have one too, though it's fuzzy from it being so early in my life.
Travel back in time to the very early 90s. I was about five or six, and I spent most of my waking hours in the care of my grandfather, who retired from being a police officer to take care of me while my parents worked. Because he had a lot more free time not doing swing shifts, he took up a hobby from his earlier life, which was raising farm animals. He used to raise big, huge hogs, goats, and horses. But this time he went smaller, with chickens, so that I could be involved in feeding them, gathering the eggs, and expending my energy running around after them.
Because he lived alone and we could only eat so many eggs a week, we would take dozens of dozens of cartons up to Tapp's, where my great uncle Albert was a parking attendant at the lot behind the building. He'd sell them to the people paying for their time on the way out, who always asked about eggs on their weekly or daily trips downtown. I only barely remember looking up at the humongous white building with the Meet Me At Tapp's inscription way up at the top. Of course, it seemed much bigger back then because I was so little.
But that's pretty much the end of my snippet of a memory. Other people's memories are much tastier and include vegetable soup and these corn sticks. Recently I made some using one of the old cast iron pans I picked up at Goodwill and blogged about it for one of my other writing gigs.
Just the other day I picked up some roasted cornmeal from Congaree Milling Company to use on future corn sticks, and encourage everyone to do the same. If you don't have a corn stick shaped pan, head out to your nearest thrift store and you're practically guaranteed to come across one or three, ready to come home and be seasoned with your love, grease, and cornmeal mix. Or, you can order a fresh new one
Note: The recipe is included in the text from the Goodwill blog. You will have to read it to get the recipe!
