Putting on the Grits

I come from a family of cooks. Not chefs. Not connoisseurs. Not fusion reduction nonsense. I'm talking REAL food. No sissy food here. If you want Sweet &Low, go home. I can't believe it's not butter? Obviously this person has not tasted butter. As my idol, the giantess Julia Child, would agree, if you are not using real ingredients, it is not worth the work.
I take pride in my reputation of being the person , who in a crisis, will come. And bring a ham. People find solace in good pork. Add brown sugar, and pineapple, and you can feel depression lifting. Potato salad with full-on mayonnaise. Not Miracle Whip. That is like believing Cool Whip and heavy whipping cream are the same. The same as WalMart and Neiman Marcus are both stores. Any other similarity is ridiculous and delusional. My favorite family recipe is my Great Aunt Lina Belle's Pound cake. It take 3 cups of flour, 3 cups of sugar, 5 eggs, 1 cup of Crisco, 1 cup of butter, 1 cup of milk. Bake at 350 for an hour. It weighs about 3 pounds and will last less than 30 minutes.

My daddy's people are from rural North Carolina. Our little town is now a tourist attraction but when we were growing up, we lived on family land , on a stretch of road where all the neighbors were family. From the beginning of the road, all the way to the river, my grandfather and his brother, baby sister, and all their children lived. Since we had 4 generations on this road, it was never clear to us exactly who was a cousin and who was an aunt or uncle. Mind now that we were not the proverbial inbred nitwits that you may recall from Deliverance  we were just raised with manners(FYI, its Arkansas and West Virginia where you can marry your brother.And for us, those places are considered up North. ). If someone was a teenager and you were a kid, then they were given the courtesy title of Uncle or Aunt. Add into that, the custom of naming children after members of previous generations, it sometimes seemed like Uncle Ernest lived two life times. He did, but just as different people. I digress.

 We were like a commune, but tasteful. Everyone had huge gardens, and cooking was a non-stop process. One of my cousins shared with me her fond culinary memoriesof being a little kid and going with her mama and sister to pick berries to bake a pie. One of the keys to success in the prep work was making sure to shake the bushes with a stick so the snakes would scatter as my aunt & her little girls gathered the berries. I'd like to see that Food Network lady that cooks in the low cut shirt, go make snakes run so she can get the freshest ingredients. My family's standard of freshness is without peer.

I love bacon. It is the perfect food. Whether wrapped around something (shrimp, oysters, water chestnuts), placed over something (baked beans with brown sugar, a little ketchup, a little mustard), or solo, bacon is bliss. Bacon comes from a pig. Not a turkey. I really think that the waddle neck is most likely the part posing as bacon. Just gross. Don't do it. Also, those bits of red cardboard chunks called Baco-bits are obscene. Get real or go home.
My grandmother baked big fluffy biscuits twice a day. My aunt describes my grandfather's daily breakfast of  a half pound of bacon with 3 eggs "floating in grease", along with the morning biscuits, as "a heart attack on a plate". Granddaddy lived to be just south of 91. 
I have an uncle who eat tons of cheese. He is making up for the Great Depression. 70 years is a lot of cheese. Go figure.

Whole milk, half& half, and sour cream should never have the word "lite" or "reduced fat" on the label. Fat is an essential part of the nutrition pyramid. As for those things called "egg beaters", I can't even imagine what nightmare goo comes in that little carton. Eggs come in a shell, straight out of  a chicken and should be labeled "Jumbo".
As Tom Berenger reminds me, we did not fight our way to the top of the food chain to be reduced to eating leaves. Or sawdust. Such as the miserable poser known as instant grits. Real grits are cooked slowly, lovingly, and silkened by Land O Lakes unsalted REAL butter. Pepper is allowed. Cheese is encouraged. Shrimp in a creamgravy, to die for. Grits are pure and should be treated with respect.

I once  spent 3 weeks in Long Island. I must give it to The New Yorkers, they do know how to eat shellfish. While I loved eating lobster every day,  breakfast fare was something else. Bagels and slices of cold pink lox , made me want to hurl. One morning, a co-worker from West Texas announced in the elevator that indeed grits would be making an appearance at the breakfast buffet.  I spied the huge chafing dish from across the room. Gingerly dropping my pocketbook at my table, I hurried past the waiting bacon strips that would soon be gracing my breakfast. Rising Star Texas girl was fast on my heels. I heard her start to giggle. Then I saw it. Those beautiful grits sat untouched, embarrassed by a complete quilt of sliced strawberries and a side sprinkling of brown sugar. I could not wrap my head around it. Did they think grits were interchangeable with Cream of Wheat? With oatmeal? Strawberries on grits was like seeing an ice cream sundae on a Porterhouse steak. Like watching a wreck in slow motion. An upset in the universe. Just wrong. Not multicultural. Not readily translated.

I guess after almost a month up North, I realized I could never really live in that climate. Like the Long Island grits, I was not in my element. Like the Panda in San Diego, I looked good but certainly was not really in my natural habitat. Time to go home. And cook.

So, the next time you get ready to cook, remember the basics I have taught you. Whole foods, nothing "lite", bacon is best, and last, but most importantly, scare the snakes out before you reach for your berries.

I remain,
The Fabulous Ma'am