Grits

This morning before I left for work, I pulled some meat out of the freezer to thaw so I could cook it for dinner tonight. But my husband got home before I did, and when I walked in, he was already cooking our meal.

Swell!



Now, when my husband cooks, I can be sure I'll have grits with dinner. I've never known someone to like grits as much as he does. In fact, once when we were dating, we decided to grill a couple of steaks for dinner. I went to the fridge to pull out two potatoes to bake, but he stopped me. He went to the pantry and pulled out the Jim Dandy Quick Grits. I'd never heard of steak and grits before, but he acted like steak and baked potatoes only get served in restaurants.

Stephen will eat grits with anything: steak, pork chops, fish, fried chicken. My eleven year-old, Lawson, is following in his footsteps. He loves grits sandwiches (grits spread between two pieces of white toast).

Stephen thinks it's a special treat to have cheese grits with dinner. I love the cheese grits too, but I don't cook them very much because they have so much fat in them. But tonight, in honor of Stephen's cooking dinner, I'm adding my cheese grits recipe to the blog.

I got this recipe from a cookbook I got for a wedding present: Pines and Plantations: Native Recipes of Thomasville, Georgia. I have the 1990 edition. It was a gift from a distant cousin whose name I don't remember, but I do recall that she spoke with a fake British accent. Nothing fake about the southern recipes found in this cook book, though, and I have stained many of its pages with drippings from the dishes I've cooked in it. I've modified this recipe, though (What else is new?) because the one in the cook book makes enough grits to serve the senior class at my son's school. I only need one casserole dish full:

Ingredients:
3/4 cups quick grits
salt and pepper to taste
paprika to taste
3 eggs
1/2 stick butter
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions:

Bring 3 cups of water to boil in a 2 quart sauce pan. Add grits and reduce heat. Simmer for about five minutes until they're done. Add salt, pepper, paprika and butter (I add enough paprika to give the grits a faint paprika color). Remove from heat. Let cool for a few minutes. While the grits are cooling, spray a 9 x 12 inch casserole dish with cooking spray. Break the eggs into the dish and beat lightly. Add the grits, little by little, to the eggs, stirring constantly so that the hot grits won't cook the eggs. When all grits have been stirred in with the eggs, stir in the cheese. Bake at 400 for about 45 minutes.

People love these cheese grits so much that we never have any left over.