I am about to take you, dear reader, down a long rabbit hole so stick with me.
Earlier this week the city announced that Marysville had been named on a list of friendly towns in Ohio.
While I generally find the town friendly enough, a look at the write-up left more questions than answers.
The online list highlighted the number of trees and parks in the city as well as the park amenities like fields, a disk golf course and “other recreational facilities.”
It listed the Marysville BMX track as “a family-friendly venue where the local community gathers to catch entertaining races…”
(The BMX track is a source of un-friendly frustration for me because city officials gained approval and funding for the track by promising it would be open for children to use but it is now locked unless there is a scheduled event.)
The article then listed that “if you have a thing for cultural pursuits, you will enjoy the experience at the Amish Heritage Country Market.”
To be fair, Amish Heritage has a variety of things and I have gone there looking for some of the foods my two Pennsylvania Dutch grandmothers made but I have never had the opportunity to interact with the multitude of “warm Amish vendors” the article promised.
In reading through the list, at least four of the communities highlighted Amish themes or businesses as the reason for their inclusion. We joked that Plain City should feel snubbed. I joked that many of the men around Plain City “look like John Cope” and the comment elicited confused stares.
It turns out that I was the only one that knew about John Cope’s corn. Cope’s corn is dried sweet corn that came in a box when I was a child. It could be stored in the pantry and was good for quite some time. It was the base for our family’s holiday corn dishes. We had fresh corn all summer but the major eating holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter — do not align with the time for corn so we used Cope’s.
The Cope’s logo is an Amish man.
The idea of dried corn was ridiculous to my coworkers who then took time to mock many of the country foods I grew up eating.
Among the most egregious for my coworkers are ponhaus and puddin. Ponhaus and puddin are made from a mixture of pork remains, organ meats and seasonings, typically made with unused scraps gathered during the butchering process. The main difference is that ponhaus, or scrapple, also has cornmeal and/or buckwheat flour to help bind the various ingredients together.
Ponhaus can be fried or baked in slices and will generally hold together in one piece.
Puddin has no binder so it has a stronger flavor but doesn’t stay together as it is pan heated.
As the local pastor, part of my father’s pay was half a hog each year but he and I were expected to help participate in the near community event of butchering on the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving. All that to say, we had plenty of both pudding and ponhaus. Typically both are considered breakfast foods, though we often ate them for dinner during the winter. The only way I could stomach these two was by putting Karo syrup on them.
While those were awful, I really loved many of the foods considered peculiar now, but which were staples in my childhood home. We had fresh bacon. My wife learned the distinction between fresh and cured bacon the first time she spent the night at my parents’ home.
I love rabbit meat and believe it to be the best meat there is. Even into college, I would go hunting after class, take rabbits to my grandparents’ home, dress them and my grandmother would cook them, often that same night.
As I was preparing this column, I asked my wife and kids if there was anything they found odd about my childhood diet. They all said it was the amount and variety of wild game.
I don’t hunt any longer so we don’t eat much game… but if anyone knows where to get good ham loaf, let me know!
-Mac Cordell is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.