Hush Puppies

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hi, this is Hallie.

Hello, Hallie, what’s going on?

Not too much today.

I’m in San Diego.

Okay.

Awesome.

So, what’s up?

Well, my nine-year-old is curious about, I don’t know if you call the term or the phrase, hush puppy.

-huh.

We’ve eaten them before, and my mother grew up in the south.

-huh.

When we would go back and visit family and friends, sometimes we would actually have hush puppies to eat.

And so the kids were wondering where the term actually came from.

And where in the South?

She was born in Macon, Georgia, and then grew up in Jacksonville, Florida.

Right. So tell us about hush puppies.

I mean, you make it sound like it’s sort of this exotic thing.

I grew up eating them all the time.

I think it’s a seasoned cornmeal made into a ball and then deep fried.

Exactly, exactly.

And your 9-year-old is, is it a boy or a girl?

A boy.

A boy, okay.

And what’s his name?

David.

David.

So your 9-year-old David wants to know why they’re called hush puppies.

Yes, and the kids and I actually discussed that one day.

Yeah?

And the only thing that I could think of is that maybe it goes way back to the slave days.

Or maybe people who were kind of poor and all they had was cornmeal.

And they might toss something out to the dog and say, hush puppy or something.

But that was all the kids and I could come up with.

Well, that’s pretty good.

I mean, that’s headed in the right direction.

As far as we can tell, it goes back quite a while to when people were just catching fish and frying them up.

And when you smell those kinds of things and your dog smells that stuff cooking,

Then your dog starts barking.

And what do you do to hush the dog?

You fry up a little bit of that cornmeal batter and you toss it to them.

Okay.

Dogs don’t talk when their mouths are full.

So that’s pretty much the idea, just something that you fry up and toss to the dogs to keep them quiet while you’re cooking your own meal.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you, Helen.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, Grant, we didn’t even talk about Hush Puppies the Shoes.

Yeah, I don’t know anything about those.

I believe that those were so named because it used to be that people would say,

My dogs are barking because dogs…

Seriously, no.

Right, dogs is slang for feet.

Right, and if your feet are tired or in pain, then your dogs are barking.

And so Hush Puppies were these nice, soft shoes that would make your feet feel more comfortable.

How about that?

How about them apples?

If you’ve got a question about food words, maybe we can help you.

If you’ve got a recipe to send, we’d love it.

The address is…

No, cook it first and then send it.

Overnight.

Nothing like three-week-old food.

Hush puppies.

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