Hello Cindy...

...cousin frog in a different bog. Relative to the " KISH " recipe, I'm with you. This is a pioneer kind of thing to use any food on hand to keep starvation from the door. Here's what I found in the Aunt Gertie Archive. It may be the same source that you have.

Granadad D's Camp Potatoes

Chop left over boiled potatoes fairly small. Fry bacon crisp and pour off most of the grease leaving enough to brown potatoes. When browned, add cream to potatoes to cover - add a touch of sugar and salt to taste and cook until cream is absorbed.

To this recipe is added the following tag end...

Kish

Prepare left over cornbread the same as above and serve with maple syrup.

This really does have a "pioneery" feeling to it. This is pretty close to what they called "corn dodgers" out in the West. The recipe goes at least as far back as the Civil War. It's sort of like a "hardtack" made with cooked (dried cornbread in this case) corn meal. It would be tougher than tanned horshide. It could be carried in pouch on your belt or in a saddle bag. It could be gnawed on raw if you had to. It could be broken up and added to anything (boiled stolen chicken - left over roasted squirel - boiled squash or turnips) to act either a thickening agent and/or a flavoring agent. You could use any flavoring you liked in the KISH, probably the stronger the flavoring the better - garlic, onion whatever. The shelf life (or pouch life) of this stuff probably depended on how rancid you would let the grease become before you used it. Hardtack and Corn Dodgers were (I believe) cooked in boiling water and may have been slightly dried like pasta or dumplings. Without grease to go rancid, these things would probably have a useable life that 1s only a little shorter than the useable life of rock!

Peace and all good

Kermit - Chef to the Bog