Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993 TAG: 9311120023
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEVE KARK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
To find these isolated pockets of culinary resistance, you usually have to get off the interstate and head for a town that might be several miles away. Look for places with gravel parking lots, with several old cars and a couple of beat-up pickup trucks parked outside.
Semis are always a good sign, too. Truckers spread the word when they find a place that serves good home-cooked food.
Inside, a quick scan should tell you all you need to know.
One of my favorite places is decorated with souvenir dishes from each of the 50 states. Plastic-cow creamers at each table are a reason for optimism. Bowling trophies displayed behind the counter mean you've really lucked out.
This is the kind of place that doesn't need a gimmick to attract its customers. There's no 10-foot plastic cowboy on the roof, no neon rainbow above the door.
Although grits should appear on the menu, most places like this will serve it whether you ask for it or not. They know a true Southern gourmand could no more imagine a breakfast without grits than he could imagine a catfish without whiskers.
Grits has a long and respectable history in this country. In 1607, the earliest settlers at Jamestown wrote that they had been met by Native Americans offering steaming bowls of something like grits mixed with animal fat, probably bear grease. The settlers liked the stuff so much they made it a staple of their diet.
Grits is made from corn, which, at that time, grew only in the New World. Dried and hulled corn kernels are commonly called hominy. Finely ground hominy is used to make grits.
Corn has been eaten in the Americas for thousands of years. Carbon dating has shown that it was grown as a food crop as early as 2000 B.C.
But it grew uncultivated long before then. Scientists discovered fossilized corn pollen in drill samples taken from rock 200 feet below the surface of present-day Mexico City.
The Native American name for corn is maize. The earliest English usage for the word "corn" actually refered to any of several cereal plants that produce edible seeds, such as wheat, rye, oats and barley.
Similarly, the word "grit" is derived from the Old English "grytt," which identified any coarsely ground grain. Only since British settlement in the New World has it been applied to ground corn.
An early American poet, Joel Barlow, wrote "The Hasty Pudding" to honor the corn-meal mush - similar to grits - that he had been fed as a child. The poem is a celebration of the simple pleasures of country life and remains a classic to this day.
Barlow's method for sweetening mush could be applied to grits as well:
"Some with molasses grace the luscious treat,
And mix, like bards, the useful and the sweet."
If no molasses is handy, a pat of butter and a sprinkle of sugar is just as tasty.
Steve Kark is an instructor at Virginia Tech and a correspondent for the Roanoke Times & World-News. He writes from his home in scenic Rye Hollow, in a remote part of Giles County south of Pearisburg.
by CNB