How to Eat Like a Southerner, Pt. I
by: Jon Crane

Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 2, No. 16 (August 14, 1999)

This Southern boy lived up north for 17 years (counted as 17 winters, but that's a topic for another column). I met a number of good people up there; some of them I still count among my dearest friends. Even my daughters are Yankees, born and raised where grits don't grow.

The only problem I had with people of the North was that I had to teach them how to eat. Their education usually began with "Intro. to Grits."

There is nothing mysterious or threatening about grits. There is no reason to fear them. I once served a large number of people breakfast in Wisconsin and put a big bowl of grits next to the platter of scrambled eggs. For a full minute, they sat there, hushed and wide-eyed, staring at that bowl of grits as if some celestial being was about to appear above it. No one dared make a move towards it.

Grits are just hominy and you know what "hominy" is, don't you? It's the bond of peace and serenity between people who eat grits.

Grits rule # 1: grits are treated like potatoes, not hot cereal. To put sugar and milk on grits is a hanging offence in the South. Grits, traditionally served with breakfast, are seasoned with salt and pepper and butter. Lots of butter. The alternative is to put cream gravy over them, made from sausage drippings. These are the ways to serve grits. I believe it's in the bible somewhere. You could look it up.

Grits rule # 2: Instant grits are also a hanging offence. 'Nuff said.

If your arteries are still functioning, you may want to serve grits in the New Orleans breakfast tradition of griods (gree-odds) and grits. The griod is a piece of thinly-cut round steak which has had flour, seasonings and garlic pounded into it using the edge of a heavy cup, then panned (pan-nayed, or "pan fried"), and cooked in a well-seasoned roux and served over grits.

Serve griods and grits with hot french bread and you have the perfect way to start your day before heading to the office to fall asleep within the first ten minutes of work. Coffee will help.

But a word must be said of coffee, especially to someone like myself with deep roots in New Orleans. Take a cup of coffee and pour it into a glass. Hold the glass up to the light. If you can read the New York Times through the coffee, you're probably living north of the line.

Good coffee should be strong. Good coffee should be dark. Good coffee should reflect the "Black Hole in Space" theory, i.e., light enters it, but never emerges from the other side. That's in the bible, too.

For a good, dark brew in New Orleans, we drink a blend of coffee and chicory. We have our friends from the North to thank for this. You see, during the War (and if you're a Southerner reading this, you don't have to be told which war when I write "the War"), coffee was hard to come by in the South. As an alternative, chicory roots were roasted, ground and used for a coffee substitute. When coffee was available, it was mixed with the ground chicory and it stuck after the War.

Here in New Orleans, we heat milk and (here's the secret), pour the warm milk from one pot and the coffee and chicory brew from another at the same time to create a half and half mixture known as café au lait. This brew is served with beignets (ben-yeas, deep-fried squares of dough, which are dusted liberally with powdered sugar and eaten while hot) for a lagníappe (lan-yapp, meaning "a little something extra"). Once you've tried it, you'll never want anything else.

See? We not only eat good, but we talk good, too!

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