Cornbread Festival comes to Houlka

HOULKA, Miss. (WCBI)- As the weather cools down, nothing beats a good bowl of chili and a buttery slice of cornbread. 

The folks in Houlka held their annual cornbread festival Saturday.

It is too bad you can’t smell or taste what’s on television. Otherwise, you would get the full experience of the annual Cornbread Festival.

Attendees got in line to sample cornbread along with special stews and soups made by the locals.

And some participants also judged the various cornbread varieties, Mexican, Speciality, and regular.

The idea of a cornbread festival started in 2013.

“Well, everybody likes cornbread. Most everybody loves cornbread, so that’s why we went with it because there are so many different things to eat with it. And we have people in the community that bring pots of all kinds of different stuff with it,” said Tina Pullen.

“I think cornbread is one of the foods that is so diverse you can it with every meal. I mean with milk and bread, buttermilk and bread all kinds of soups and stews. It’s just one of those easy to make quick recipes that you can just make it any time you too, morning, noon or night,” said David Huffman.

And the town is very close.

“Everybody knows everybody and when something on whether there’s an issue with sickness or anything like that people just want to jump in and the first they want to do is cook. You know they want to cook and take it to them. So that’s really how we come together is through our food,” said Pullen.

While folks around here generally refer to the town as simply Houlka, it is actually according to the sign on the town hall New Houlka which is different than the original or old Houlka.

“In the early 1900s when the railroad came through it was about a mile maybe a little over a mile from what we call old Houlka, and so the townspeople at old Houlka just put the buildings on rollers old trees, and they rolled all those buildings up here around the railroad tracks,” said Huffman.

And so why do folks in Houlka think their festival is the best in the area?

“Because Houlka is doing it,” said Pullen.