A good-looking breakfast, but the grits are missing
Coffee black, eggs over light or scrambled, biscuits covered in gravy, Swaggerty’s Sausage patties, and grits swimming in butter. Sounds like a great breakfast, doesn’t it?
I was in Montana trying for mule deer and antelope a while back. That went fine. Trouble was that I couldn’t get any grits up there. They served potatoes. That’s a valiant effort, but it wasn’t grits and I missed them. (Just for the record, Bojangles’ doesn’t exist in Montana or we wouldn’t be having this discussion).
I tried to encourage the little restaurant’s owner and cook combination to get with the program, but he talked with a bit of a flat accent and couldn’t understand my proper Georgia English. They all thought I talked funny, although I didn’t see anyone laughing.
As a side note, have you hunted or fished in Montana? One thing you might want to remember, the air is free but there’s not much of it. It’s rough to get enough of it to feel good. Be sure and take a generous supply of headache powders. If you get one of those altitude headaches, you’ll need the powders.
Back to the grits.
Grits has become a fashion statement, of sorts. Is that proper grammar? Is ‘Grits’ singular or plural? I was invited for breakfast with friends in Jonesboro last January, I do have a few friends, contrary to popular belief, and the restaurant served little cubed potatoes, along with grits, of course. Are we losing our focus here? Breakfast here means grits, not potatoes. We must decide where we are. Georgia is not a breakfast potato place. Come to think of it, the plate has some orange slices and some green sprigs on the side. I was not impressed and left all the little garden alone. I drink orange juice sometimes on Sunday mornings but don’t eat oranges for breakfast.
Trouble is that people who don’t like grits don’t know how to prepare them. Take the following notes. First, you cook grits on the stove. Don’t use INSTANT GRITS. You need to get this right. Whatever cooking instructions say on the box, cook them much longer and just before they’re done, add a quarter pound of butter and stir frequently.
How do you eat them? Spoon a giant dob on your plate, add more butter, lots of it, a considerable amount of salt and finally cover them completely with pepper. As a matter of practice, go ahead and cover everything with pepper; eggs, gravy, everything. Mix it all together with your fork in a swirling clockwise motion. If you have grits left over after the eggs, sausage and biscuits are consumed and scattered around the edge of your plate, use your second biscuit to gather up the remaining grit (grits)? ‘Sopping up’ is traditional.
Enjoy your breakfast. Following my lead, breakfast as described should last until lunch with country fried steak, fried apples with cinnamon, mashed potatoes (potatoes are OK for lunch) and plenty of gravy again.
Photo: courtesy Pixabay.
