FLAVOR: The cornbread queen

Blue-ribbon winner Velma Sandage of Donaldson displays her cornbread, which won Best of Show in the baked-goods category at the Hot Spring County Fair.
Blue-ribbon winner Velma Sandage of Donaldson displays her cornbread, which won Best of Show in the baked-goods category at the Hot Spring County Fair.

— Velma Sandage of Donaldson doesn’t usually measure out her ingredients when she cooks. That little fact, however, didn’t come between her and the Best of Show ribbon at the Hot Spring County Fair where her cornbread recipe beat out other savories and sweets in the baked-goods category.

“The secret,” she said, “is I use stone-ground cornmeal, but as I was making this recipe, I had to get the cups out to measure the amounts because I wasn’t sure what to write on the recipe card.”

“She’s been making the cornbread forever,” Sandage’s daughter Brenda Kretz said. “We call it ‘the good stuff.’” She makes the best fried pies in the county, too, and her sugar cookies are the best thing you ever ate.”

Her mother laughed.

“Oh, all my kids and grandkids love my sugar cookies,” Sandage said.

She bags the cookies and fried pies to sell at the benefit bake sale held when the entire family gets together at the biennial family reunion.

“They sell like hot cakes,” Kretz said. “She sells a bag of six pies for $35, and people are just grabbing them left and right.”

Sandage grew up on a farm in Donaldson along with her two brothers and four sisters. Her father died when she was 5 years old, but the entire family pulled together to work the farm, she said.

“We all did everything. We were blessed to own the farm, but we picked the cotton and corn and planted a big garden and kept up with a fruit orchard.”

And they cooked.

“Back then, you didn’t go into town all the time,” she said. “At Christmastime, it would take us all day just to get all the ingredients ready for my mother’s fruitcake. It was so huge, we had to use a metal dishpan to bake it in. And the fragrance of that cake — oh my, it filled the entire house.

“My mother was a marvel,” Sandage said. “She canned figs, watermelon-rind preserves and dried all the fruits from the trees. She was always working.”

Some of Sandage’s fondest memories are of accompanying her mother to Home Extension meetings.

“Back then, they were always involved in projects, and I remember they took it upon themselves to sew mattresses for the community,” Sandage said.

Sandage said her cooking skills came in handy when she married her husband, Ralph.

“My husband and I grew up across the field from each other,” she said. “After he came back from the service, he worked for a spell for Southwestern Bell and later in construction, but he eventually became a minister, and church potlucks were a big part of our life.”

The couple returned to Donaldson and raised two children, who have multiplied into five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Kretz remembers a home filled with love and good food.

“I remember roast and peas and strawberry cake and, of course, Mama’s cornbread,” she said. “And I remember I always had to wash dishes.”

“You still do,” her mother said with a laugh.

The mother and daughter now share their talents at local craft shows. Kretz favors folk painting on country implements, such as saws and skillets. Sandage, a seamstress in addition to a cook, sells her handmade place mats, potholders, tote bags and Christmas ornaments.

While the money is nice at the craft shows, there’s nary a blue ribbon in sight.

“In the 50 years that Mama has participated in the fair, she has won hundreds of ribbons,” her daughter said. “And she gives them back to the county to reuse.”

“Well, those ribbons are expensive,” her mother said.

This year, she won two or three dozen ribbons, but Sandage is quick to point out, “Not all of them were blue,” she said. “I like blue.”

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