In 1973 Robert Parker began writing the Spenser Detective Novels. Eventually, 40 were written by Parker, 8 by author Ace Adkins, after Parker's death, and 1 that Parker co-wrote with his literary agent, Helen Braun.

The Spenser novels detailed the life and exploits of Spenser, a Boston private eye, his lady friend (Psychologist) Susan Silverman and Spenser's friend, "Hawk". Neither Spenser, or Hawk's first names were ever revealed in any of the 49 novels.

Hollywood made one at least one Spenser movie and there was a TV series a while back. I did not care for either. The movie plot bastardized the character's past and I did not finish watching it.

One of Spenser's joys in life was cooking and his love of cornbread, corn muffins and cornmeal pancakes.

I am a big fan and have read all of the Spenser novels. One of the things I liked most about Spenser was his love for Cornbread. Long before reading my first Spenser Novel, I had cooked every Cornbread dish he ever cooked. One of my favorites, and Spenser's also, was what he called cornmeal pancakes; what I call Hoe Cakes. Here is my simple recipe for this old time Southern Breakfast meal.

My Dad always said you could plow all day long after a good breakfast of Hoe Cakes with soft butter and cane syrup. On the depression era farm sharecropped by his parents, they raised the corn, made their own butter milk, butter and lard, then cooked off the cane syrup in the fall for their use over the next year and sold to the community around Hollandale, MS for money to buy the flour used in the recipe. This was a meal that started most of their days. My recipe uses Self Rising flour and corn meal. Their recipe used baking powder and soda to make the cakes rise.

You'll Need:

3/4 cups Self Rising Cornmeal
1/2 cup Self Rising Flour
Enough Buttermilk to make a medium thick batter
Oil and a skillet
Butter and your favorite syrup.

Directions:

Add the cornmeal and flour to a mixing bowl,

Then enough fresh buttermilk to make a batter the thickness of whatever you are accustomed to cooking.

You will use a skillet, with vegetable oil to pan fry the hoe cakes. The oil in your skillet needs to be hot enough for the batter to sizzle when added. I usually try a dollop of batter to check on the hotness of the skillet and don't start cooking until that dollop sizzles.

Portion out the batter to a size you can flip during the cooking, and handle as a stack on your plate.

When the first side of the batter browns, flip the cakes and finish cooking them. You want the batter cooked all the way through, so make sure that occurs.

Hoe Cakes, cooked, staged and ready to plate for breakfast.

When they were younger, our grandkids loved hoe cakes (and regular pancakes) for breakfast. The problem was, no two of the four liked the same syrup. Because of that, we have lots of syrup in our cabinet, used for cooking, cookie and cake baking, pancakes and hoe cakes.

Place however many hoe cakes you want on your plate, add soft butter and a liberal amount of your favorite syrup. Cane syrup for me, although Maple is also nice. My mother's dad always made a big production of mixing his butter and syrup together on a dish with a fork, and applying that to his hot hoe cakes and biscuits.

Hoe Cakes with butter and Syrup are a really good breakfast, and a nice Sunday Night meal. They go best with a cup of coffee. Bacon, or sausage would also be nice.