7 things to do in Annapolis: Joyce White serves up the story behind classic Maryland cooking

Munching on a piece of yellow cornbread, I tried to find its story as food historian Joyce White might. Native people ate hoecakes, made from stone-ground corn and water cooked on a flat surface. English settlers gobbled them up, replacing mortar and pestle with water-powered mills on the Chesapeake Bay. As they were supplanted by industrial mills, parts of the grain and a lot of the flavor got left on the factory floor, pouring tons of cheaply produced, bland cornmeal into Maryland kitchens. (Photo: Rick Hutzell/The Baltimore Banner)