At 08:49 AM 5/6/2003 -0600, kestrel wrote:
>
>> Just makes me want to run out and put.....
>>                 syrup on my grits.
>>
>> [Though not being natively Southern, I can't say I've had grits but once
>> or twice -- though am now South enough that COULD be remedied -- still,
>> seems the polenta treatment might be called for.]
>
>I've always thought grits to be vastly over-rated. 

Not if they're REAL (as opposed to instant or quick-cooking) grits, they're
not, and not if they're done right.  I guess you could call us grits snobs,
but Quaker is right out (in fact, Quaker is a blasphemer as far as grits
are concerned, and the only valid use for their product in these parts is
to kill ants)!  Instant or quick-cooking, in this house, are not grits.
Only the coarse, slow-cooking kind that you have to skim the chaff off of
first enter the definition of grits.  Four cups of water to one cup of
grits, and cook till the cows come home.

Best grits we ever found are at the Clay County Fair every April.  Fellow
comes with his gasoline-powered grinder about the size of a riding mower
with a cart behind.  Thing has a date stamped on it:  1923.  Has a flywheel
that you have to crank by hand to get it going.  The owner's getting on in
years, and one time we were there -- year before last I think -- a Clay
County sheriff's deputy was standing by, and offered to crank.  He got it
going to the cheers of all.  These are very coarse grits, and are just yummy.

Second-best come from Colonial Williamsburg, and Marti and Karl brought us
back a bag from their honeymoon.

There's a website, grits.com, which has the real thing, too.  They're
located in Tennessee.  What you want in grits is stone-ground.  Or ground
by a portable grinder stamped 1923.  

And if you want to see controversy, look at the forum they have on the
subject of mayonnaise vs. Miracle Whip .  We're four-square on the
side of mayonnaise.  (Some even have the temerity to suggest that only
Miracle Whip is REALLY mayonnaise.  Those people are kooks . . .) 

>I do have them from time
>to time, but I can't say it's up there on my all time favorites list -- just
>one of those things I get a yen for now and then. But anyway -- I never
>intentionally put syrup on my grits, but I *do* put it on my sausage, and
>there's some cross fertilization that goes on, and the taste combination
>never disappointed  

Accidental syrupization is acceptable.  Barely.  

>If there's no syrup interaction, then it's just
>butter and salt. My dad is very much the butter and sugar adherent, mom is
>butter and salt, Kevin won't touch them. My grandmother likes them
>eat-with-a-fork thick, I like mine eat-with-a-spoon smooth.

Oh, no.  No spoon!  The grits are supposed to stand up!  

That's Keys's standard:  do the grits stand up, meaning can you have them
in a coherent group on your plate, rather than being forced to serve them
in a bowl because otherwise they'd be an amorphous puddle all over the
plate?  The question to judge the quality of grits is:  Do the grits stand
up?  Cracker Barrel, at least the one in Orange Park, Florida, serves grits
that stand up.  They still put 'em in a bowl, but they do stand up.

>Now if you want to talk "mush" let me know... you ain't had
"Southern"
>breakfast (or dinner-when-you've-got-no-money) until you've had mush :)
>(fried polenta with ham bits, and that too, is a syrup/no syrup controversy.
>I like it both ways)

Cornmeal mush.  Can be serve with syrup, depending, probably, on region.
Cornmeal tends to be sweeter than grits.

Veloci--and that's more than you wanted to know about grits--raptor
 

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