Grits Forever


Several years ago David Perry and the late Bill Neal published a brief tribute to a great dish: Good Old Grits Cookbook. I don’t make grits much any more. I don’t have time in the morning for slow cooked grits; I don’t much like quick cooked; and I can’t abide instant. Neal and Perry reminded me, however, that grits are not just for breakfast and fit in nicely with a main dish. I was particularly struck by “eggplant creole,” essentially a vegetable stew served over hot cheese grits. The dish may be a little warm for the summer, but it is at the top of my list for the first cool days of fall.

2 thoughts on “Grits Forever”

  1. I know you’re not going to like this, but I have a solution. And I know that my friends, who know me for the nightowl I am, are going to think I’ve gone crazy. But the answer is simple. Get up earlier. It’s worth it to live like a civilized person.

    The problem gets worse because grits don’t really work without biscuits or cornbread and country ham and red-eye gravy. That means you have to get up even earlier.

    You can’t really make biscuits without doing the lard thing (ew, disgusting and time consuming, but butter just won’t work). Or if you want cornbread it’s got to be made in an iron skillet that’s never been washed, and baked in the oven. Add more time.

    I figure that if you start by say 5:30 AM, you could be having an Old South breakfast by 7:00 or so. My grandmother managed this every day of her adult life. And my grandfather took the leftover biscuits or cornbread, smeared them with butter and honey, wrapped them in a cloth and took them to the fields for his morning snack.

    I wish I could say that I do this every day, but I don’t (see nightowl reference above). I try to do it every week, and actually succeed about two or three times a month. The rest of the time, I’m just as uncivilized as all the lost tv watching suburbanites out there in their sterile world. My grandmother would not approve.

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