THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 8, 1996 TAG: 9604080138
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
In the car repair shop, the magazine Southern Living - March 1993, if you're interested - supplied exotic recipes with which to introduce plain old grits.
My feelings about these rich offerings were mixed, much as were the recipes - or receipts, to get into the old-fashioned mode - which, mixing the grits with many rare items, masked the grits.
Don't count me among rabid grits-eaters who insist there is something wrong about people - even un-American or, worse, un-Southern - if they aren't partial to grits as is, without adornment.
A few true-grits devotees rave as if the mere act of eating grits is an exploit of manhood, a test or ordeal which one must undergo to win acceptance among one's fellows in this human race.
If a body doesn't care for grits, so what? That's fine by me.
At his or her own table is a viand or two that would leave me cold, and I would appreciate him or her not bullying me into devouring a plate of, say, ramps or pig's-ears, God wot.
So why shove grits at them?
Eat and let eat, is my theme.
What you like depends on what you were raised. I scorn no man's vittles; just let me decide whether to eat 'em.
He can talk about 'em all he pleases. But spare me from fricasseed, honey-dipped 13-year locusts or some such.
You could make a case, not a very convincing one, I admit, of scheming to initiate a novice into enjoying grits by smothering the grits in delectable delicacies and then when he has wolfed them down, exclaiming: ``HAH! YOU ATE GRITS!''
But if a body can't taste the grits in disguise, how in the world is he or she going to cultivate an appetite for them?
The magazine had delicious-sounding grits-in-disguise recipes, one being Classic Charleston Breakfast Shrimp in which the grits sank from sight in a dozen other ingredients.
In another recipe, Grillades (gree-YAHDS) and Grits, thinly pounded 2-inch squares of round steak are smothered in tomato gravy, hyped with 11 other ingredients and poured over a mound of unsuspecting grits, which become well-nigh indistinguishable in the melange.
The place for grits, to my taste, is a bland accompaniment standing honorably on their own, take 'em or leave 'em, with eggs, country ham, red-eye gravy, fried apples, and sliced fresh tomatoes, or better yet, fried green tomatoes, with biscuits to sop the residue.
Long ago on radio was a soap opera about a mellow fellow who didn't do much, just ramble in a soothing baritone, ``Just Plain Bill.''
That's my order, Just Plain Grits.
You choose what you please. by CNB