we enjoy the local cuisines of Texas and Alabama, from whence we hailed, while we're down there.

But we never stay long; we'd drop dead of heart attacks.

I grew up in the south and grits are just a delivery conduit for butter, sugar, or bacon bits in my experience. Plain grits cooked in water are just bland ground corn. Everyone I have witnessed adds a dollop of butter or sugar or even bacon bits to flavor them. I can only tolerate them with a little butter and or the bacon bits. Never tried them with cheese as you described. Might be good?

I saw them open a new package of cheese. It was the size of a large loaf of bread.

Lots of bacon, lots of sausage, a few country ham steaks (and that's probably because they are one of the most expensive items on the menu).

When they make the cheese grits (which, as stated, are loaded with lard), they plate a couple of ladles and swirl in about two tablespoons of butter. When they add the cheese slice, it has about another two tablespoons of butter on it.

That really sounds like a heart attack special. I'm sure that my great grandparents ate this way. Odd thing, neither died from heart disease. I think all the fresh vegetables and lack of processed foods had some kind of heart protection for them. Both lived into their 80s. Cancer and lung disease if I recall correctly.
I know for sure my great grandfather had some kind of lung/breathing issue.

Red-eye gravy. (OK that might really be three words.)

cheese. Can't stand the idea of sugar myself

We were at a restaurant and I got it as a side. It's been YEARS (probably 25 - when I was in the army) aaaaaaaaaand.....nope. Still don't like them.

The Repubs me that kills me is when you order a sausage biscuit and they ask if you want jelly.

Along with mayonnaise sandwiches. But grits never had anything added but salt and margarine. (I don't remember butter being cheaper, so I doubt we had it.) There was no such thing as shrimp and grits (barf) or cheese grits. I still make grits (instant now, don't gasp too loudly) and it still takes me back to Baton Rouge 60 years ago. But things change, and people make their own grits in the own way. Such is life.

And the thoughts of getting any kind of pork-fat taste in my mouth gags me.

I am a misfit.

"So good it'll make you slap yore mother!"

whatever the hell they are!

Cheese grits should be eaten with fried mullet and hushpuppies.



Grits with sugar? That's Cream of Wheat.

... looked dumbfounded by white gravy. The man kept dipping the ladle into it, trying to identify it. One of the Southerners at the buffet told him it was white gravy and he said, "White gravy?! What's that?"

I'm from the Midwest and that was food that I assumed was universal, but I guess not!

We all showed up, everyone got a chore (I was on "bacon duty&quot and one week the pastor made white gravy.

He cheated a little (used powdered mix in an envelope) but his tragic error was using the big Pyrex measuring cup and putting in twice the amount of water by mistake.

I am sure the story will be passed down from generation to generation.

... other than very thin white gravy and I'm not picturing it?

EDIT: Never mind! I know what it looked like now! LOL!

I have tasted grits and I don't need to do that ever again.

... that I don't really know if that's called white gravy too! It's darker, but not as dark as beef-based gravy.

The gravy at that buffet was chicken-based.

How do people live on the food described in this thread and not become morbidly obese by the time they're out of high school?

I'm serious, I'm not judging them...I'm in good shape right now but I have had weight issues in the past.

There were quite a few people who came in who could hardly walk. I am assuming that if you were raised on this kind of food from birth, it's simply normal food.

I grew up in Massachusetts, spend a few decades in California, made stops in Nevada, Texas and Colorado. Now I'm here. Because of that, this isn't the kind of food I'd consider eating. I have a couple of strips of bacon with breakfast and I'm thinking "better go easy for a while."

The interesting thing is that they make a selling point of the fact that the fries are hand-cut. They have a huge grey plastic trash can (like for raking the yard) that is filled to the top with russets. But when they deep-fry them, they come out limp, and they are shimmering with grease. If it's what you grew up with, it's nothing more than "fries." For me, I had to discard at least half of the photos I took of the fries because they wouldn't appeal to anyone who didn't grow up eating them that way.

I stay away from it.
McDonalds' customers tend to look very unhealthy. Most look obese and many have bad complexions.

Some people, particularly young people, are unaware of how much influence their food has on their health.

White gravy is also called country gravy. You make a roux out of butter, flour, salt and pepper, cook until it's smooth, then add milk.

when you cook breakfast sausage, after you take the sausage out put a couple of tablespoons of flour in there and little it cook a little then poor milk in there until it is right and put some pepper on it

5 Tablespoons Bacon Drippings (Bacon Grease)
4 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
Approximately 2 cups milk (Whole or 2%, not skim, fat-free, fat-less, or other, and nothing heavier, it won’t work.)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Heat bacon grease in a large, heavy bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add flour and combine. Add ¼ tsp salt and around 10 grinds pepper. (More or less if you prefer)
Stir until the flour is about the color of peanut butter and smells nutty. Add ½ of the milk, reduce heat to medium low.
Allow to come to a simmer, stirring constantly to avoid sticking. On the first run, the gravy is likely to nearly seize, be ready with more milk.
Add milk by quarter or half cups until gravy has thickened considerably. If using a whisk you’ll know the gravy is ready when drawing the whisk through the gravy leaves “tracks” from the wires that remain visible for at least 5 seconds.
Add at least 10 more grinds pepper and another pinch of salt, to taste.

I love bacon but this does not look appetizing at all.

Here, pork fat from bacon or sausage rules the day.

Chicken drippings, pork, beef, etc. It has to be thick and it has to be white. If you don't have meat drippings it can be made with butter and cheese added. My Aunts used to do that for biscuits and gravy for breakfast.

I don't consume enough gravy to remember all the terminology, I guess. Lol.

Those Easterners acted like they'd never even seen such gravy, though.

5 Tablespoons Bacon Drippings (Bacon Grease)
4 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

But instead of milk or cream add coffee, make sure to scrape up the brown bits and finish with a dollop of butter and whisk together....... yum!
m
GRITS.. Girls Raised In The South... ya'll

It's a very salty, very thin gravy. The coffee is the key. Yum, yum, yum. I'm sure it shortens your life. LOL.

I thought it had to be country ham to be called red eye gravy, I never knew you could use bacon grease.

I don't think I could ever stomach something like that.

I put in lots of pepper and lots of pieces of cooked bacon, serve it over biscuits. The restaurants I've gone to in the last decade make it with sausage drippings, and I hate it that way. They call it "country gravy".

Used to be a place in Buckhead (Atlanta) that served catheads and gravy, done right!

Catheads are biscuits the size of a cat's head.

and can be made with any kind of fried meat drippings. one of the best is the drippings made from frying chicken in bacon grease. OMG

and yes you can make it with low fat milk just fine, it is the flour that thickens it and there is plenty of fat in the grease itself, though of course it is even richer if you use whole milk, half and half or even real cream.

I was raised by Southern parents (Tennessee/South Georgia) and my Mother always called grits "Georgia Ice Cream." During the depression, it was as close as they got to a creamy treat.

As a kid, they disgusted me but my parents ate them frequently.

Now living in Colorado, I buy stone ground grits when I visit my in-laws in Charleston. I cook them for almost an hour and top with grass-fed butter and salt. They are delicious, filling and remind me of my wonderful parents and happy childhood. No lard necessary and I will never give them up!

I used to buy grits that took 30 minutes to cook. The instant, or quick-cooking grits is all I can find in any grocery now, and they DO NOT HAVE THE FLAVOR of the longer cooking ones. Do any of you have a source to order longer cooking, or stone ground grits?????

We all love grits, but I made a grits casserole using an old recipe that was bland and tasteless not long ago. Adding cheese, etc., does not take the place of good grits, although I like to add butter, cheese, jalapeños (or hot sauce) to mine.

http://www.bradleyscountrystore.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=59
The store mills its own grits and has since the 1920s.

If you order from them be sure to get some of their Famous Smoked Sausage and try their smoked pork chops. http://www.bradleyscountrystore.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=61 Most people prefer their mild sausage - that is the traditional recipe - but their hotter varieties are probably good, too. I can't eat those.

Bradley's is just down the road from us - the family that owned this farm before us raised their own corn to feed to pigs that they sold to Bradley's. The store still buys locally raised pigs and they do their own butchering and smoking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About Bradley's

Stands just as it did in 1927, today with father and daughter, 3rd and 4th generation Bradleys.

Twelve miles from Tallahassee, a pleasant drive out Centerville Road, beneath a majestic canopy of oak trees and Spanish moss, is Bradley’s Country Store. Their trade, plain and simple, is selling the best, old fashioned, country smoked and fresh sausage money can buy.

If you’re accustomed to city shopping, you’ll be in for a surprise when you drop in. Bradley’s, a modest building, stands today just as it did when it was erected in 1927. There are no gaudy signs or flashy counter displays. What you’ll find, instead, is the same honest, rustic simplicity and dedication to quality that was the keystone of the operation Grandma Mary Bradley began in 1910, when she sold sausage from her own kitchen.

That tradition has endured through four generations of the Bradley family and still attracts thousands of customers from around the area, and indeed from the entire Southeast. And that tradition has been recognized on the National Register of Historic Places since April 1984.
More: http://www.bradleyscountrystore.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=4
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

https://georgiapecan.com/shop/stone-ground-white-grits-unbleached-32oz/?gclid=Cj0KEQjw4cLKBRCZmNTvyovvj-4BEiQAl_sgQgXbZAZKR-a51HnHFYpjwlEftUBusKEcFXtB3cZf8YIaAqX_8P8HAQ

I looked up Whole Foods - they have it in bulk, and I can drive 25 miles into the city to get it. have to put it on my "city" list.

isn't really typical South, there still is a lot of Southern Food.

Grits. Tried several times in different places. Reminded me far too much of gross Farina which my Mom gave me as a kid. Yuck.

Sausage and Biscuits. Love the biscuits. Lose the Cream Sauce and Sausage. I've never like any kind of Cream Sauces.

Fried Chicken? Ok, once in a while. Again, never was a big fan of fried anything.

Don't even go there with GATOR anything. Eeeeeewwww. Loved the Grouper, Mahi Mahi, and Blackened Catfish (not the name). Gumbo and Jambalaya are good.

Florida is weird. South is north and north is south... Upper florida is just an extension of south Georgia and southern Alabama... The southern part of the state is full of yankee transplants like me...
m

Still SW Florida, where we lived, still has many of those Southern dishes. The Everglades Seafood Festival has a lot of very "strange" foods, especially Gator dishes. Prawns are tasty as looking as they aren't looking back at me.

But I've read that there is a large Amish community down there so I guess they make sense.

Up here in the Red Hills of the Florida Panhandle we have a wide range of types of restaurants - Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Peruvian, Cuban and many more. Some mix in traditional Southern ingredients which make it interesting.

the farther north you go, the more Southern it gets in Florida. I would imagine that the Panhandle being close to the other Southern Gulf States would be similar as being closer to Georgia.

Still, all of Florida is probably unique in that it is a Winter Haven for tourists and snowbirds. Wherever they come from, local restaurants will have to give them other options of the food from where they came from.

Might not be too healthy but it sure does taste good!!
m

i thought it was the corn, i knew nothing.

In Italy the same thing is called "polenta" I asked a chef one time what is the difference. He said, to him the only difference is instead of water in grits, polenta uses a beef or chicken stock. Made sense to me!! I have been making home made tortillas and arepas recently. I read the arepa flour is a cooked flour. Trying to find what they mean by cooked corn flour was a pain but I found out what they do. It's basically GRITS!!! They cook the corn and water, then dry it out and chop/grind it up into a flour.. I thought that was neat.. Arepas, to me are just like a corn based english muffin. Very easy to make and fill it with what ever you want.
m

For the coarser or stoneground grinds it might take a couple of minutes more, but its quick and easy. Best of all, there is no stirring until you add the cheese at the end. Great stuff for breakfast or brunch, and dinner too.

We never ate grits. And I knew very few people that did. Yuck.

We took our ground corn in the form of cornbread. Now, that's larrupin' good!

At least not in my memory. I suspect that during the Depression she ate way too many grits. She never served them at home and never ordered them at restaurants.

My Dad, whose parents were from Upper Peninsula Michigan, never ate grits either. In fact, the only person I know who likes grits is my husband and his parents were from Minneapolis! He has to order his grits at restaurants since I have no clue how to cook them and do not intend to ever learn.

I never tasted grits until I went to Basic Training in South Carolina. I thought they were cream of wheat and put sugar and milk on them, to the utter horror of southerners sitting beside me.

It's all the same, basically...flour and butter / oil / meat fat, whatever, to form a roux, then milk, then pepper, and whatever else people choose to put in it.

I made chicken fried steaks about a year ago and did it with flour + oil, milk, salt, pepper, and some cayenne for kick.

and I have never heard of anyone making grits with lard. In fact, I haven't known anyone cooking with lard since I was a child. You sure that was lard?

...I saw the butter they used for everything else, and it was standard yellow butter. Four tubs of it in different spots in the kitchen.

This was white, looked identical to lard, and I was in and out of the kitchen. Didn't see a label on the tub.

I know the yellow in butter comes from food coloring, but this was just too snow-white and firm to match the butter I saw them using. The only thing I'm aware of with a similar color and texture is Crisco, AKA vegetable shortening.

pigs in the fall--cut them up. Some hams But lots of fat left over to make lard on the wood stove in the kitchen. Slowly cook the fat down over a few days till the lard rose to the top (the white stuff). stored it in gallon tubs in the cool cellar for the winter.
What a mess but it happen every fall--on all the farms.

uga uga.

but for popcorn?

as a northerner i know no grits. but i grew up on corn mush. butter & brown sugar. raisins or craisins optional. great day 2 w/ butter + syrup.

Corn meal mush mixed with pork scraps and seasons. Chilled,sliced thin and fried to a golden brown. Common in Pennsylvania Dutch country.