Okay, we are part of the 'grit-eating' world, and have never eaten or
tasted polenta, per se. It was always my understanding that grits are
made from hominy which is made from soaking corn kernels in lye. The
hominy is then dried and ground, voila, grits. Polenta, I thought, was
more akin to corn meal, just a course ground meal. In Dixie, cornmeal is
used in frying, and in making cornbread, which I have always thought would
be closer to what polenta would be like than grits.
Now mind you, I grew up eating Quaker instant grits-blasphemy, I know, to
some, but common enough for you to know what that is. Now, we mostly use
the long cook version, still Quaker, but we like the course ground, long
cook grits. I eat grits with butter and sometimes cheese or sausage or
bacon. I don't put eggs in them the way dh does, nor ham, nor onions, nor
sugar nor milk, nor anything else that I have ever heard of using to
flavor grits. I think I am rather simplistic in my grits preferences,
but I should also include that I have eaten leftover fried grits and a
cheese grit casserole with fried fish.
So here we are in Kroger yesterday (I rarely shop at Kroger anymore, but
wanted some organic cherry juice that only they carry) and dh puts a bag
of Quaker "yellow corn grits" in the buggy. We later had a discussion
about the difference and I told him what I knew about so called hominy
grits, and that the lye removed the color, I thought. He went to the web
for answers. He looked at Wikipedia? and found a page that suggested that
the only difference between yellow grits and white grits was the color of
the corn kernel. He found something else that likened the process to the
difference between brown rice and white rice, equating yellow grits with
brown rice-degerminated. So is this degerming process the whole lye to
hominy stage? Have we just dropped the word hominy from hominy grits and
just call them grits, or are grits and hominy grits separate things still?
Are Quaker instant grits really instant hominy grits? Are Quaker long
cook grits really hominy grits since they are white and degermed, even
though it doesn't say hominy?
Fast forward to this morning, we prepared the yellow grits as usual.
Neither of us liked them. It is not grits. This did not even approximate
grits, even with butter and salt/pepper. If this is polenta, I surely
don't like it. Half a spoonful was enough for me. But, perhaps if this
is polenta, I have cooked it improperly and seasoned it improperly. Dry,
except for the color, it looks just like long cook grits in courseness.
Do I need to feed this to the chickens or is there a yummy dish I could
make and call it polenta? Could it be used like a cornmeal in cornbread
with tons of corn and jalepenos?
What the heck??
Bev
--
EarthNSky Farm 34.498N 85.076W
SISU! (Finnish--There is no single word in English that encompasses
all that sisu means, but it combines the following ideas: guts, pep,
determination, stubbornness, perseverance, hardiness, stamina, go, do,
nerve, spunk, pluck, and grit. It's like "Just Do It!" & "Go for It!")
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