Grits, Bacon & Eggs

When my baby sister and I were little, we used to get carted off to my grandmother's house, every other Friday night, to spend the night. "But I don't WANT to go, ma! She cuts our nails way down to the QUICK and makes us pull weeds for a NICKLE!" "She's a lonely old woman. Grab your teddy bear and get into the station wagon!"

To be fair, she would pay us a quarter for pulling weeds, when we got older.

She lived in a great big old haunted Victorian house in the historic district of town, which used to scare the bejeeebus out of us when things would go crik in the night. And since she was an early riser, we'd wake up sometimes and she wouldn't be there - she'd already be in the kitchen, drinking her coffee and reading her paper.

For breakfast, she'd usually cook us Grits, Bacon and Eggs.

Now, little critters like ourselves - we used to eat the bacon and eggs without any problems, but grits, even for us true-blooded southern gals, was a bit of a stuggle to get down us. Something about the texture, I think. So what she would do would be to cook it all up and then mash it all together, so we'd end up eating some grits just to get to the good crunchy bacon parts.

I hated it, then, as a kid; now, it's my most tried and true comfort food, hands down, evar.

This recipe will feed two if you're a Yankee, one if you're a Southerner.

First, you have to cook the individual parts. I always start with the grits. I use yellow grits, but if you like your corn grits to have bleach in them, go ahead and get the white grits. Up to you, personally I prefer to have a little bit more color to my food.

Grits are easy enough to cook, and why some people buy instant grits is one of the great mysteries of the universe. Grits cook fast, and if anyone tells you different they're lying to you.

The way you're SUPPOSED to cook grits, is to put a cup of water to boil on the stove, add some salt and butter to it, and when it's boiling - add 1/4 cup of grits to it, and stir until it's done. But that's aggrevating because once you used your measuring cup to measure the water, and then you add grits to it, the grits stick to the cup and make a mess. So this is how *I* do it: I measure the grits, first, add it to the pot, add the cup of water (which rinses out the grits!), add salt & butter, stir it all up, and bring to a boil. How fast you bring it to a boil, depends upon how long it takes you to cook the rest of the goodies. After you bring it to a boil, though, stir it and stir it until it starts to thicken up - and then take it off the fire and let it sit for a few minutes. It'll continue to thicken up.

While you have your grits going, cook up some bacon. How many pieces? well that depends on your appetite. At least two!

There's lots of ways of cooking bacon. You can cover it in paper towels and cook it in the microwave for five minutes or so. You can lay them on a cookie sheet and bake it in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Or, you can do it the CORRECT way and risk life, limb, and 3rd degree burns by cooking them in a frying pan. Believe me, it's well worth the effort.

After you've cooked up the bacon, lay them on paper towels to drain, and pour most of the bacon grease into a heat-proof container for later use. No use in wasting the bacony goodness!

Next - time to make the eggs. How do you like your eggs? You can scramble them of course, which would be the easiest way to do it, but I like mine fried, with the yolks still runny. "Over easy" is I guess how it's called. Fry them until they are well and set, then turn them over.

If the yolks break, that's ok. Nobody's perfect and it all goes to the same place anyway. How you check to make sure the whites are done, is to "tap" it using the edge of the spatula, on the white, right next to the yolk. If it feels firm, and the yolk is still wiggly, it's ready.

Now comes the fun part! Putting it all together!

Plate the grits.

I prefer the plates that are almost bowls, but if your grits are the right consistency it won't matter much. Add butter to the grits, and mix it up well. Layer with the fried eggs, then the bacon - and with your fork, mix it all up.

Viola! Grits, bacon and eggs.

For variation, you can cook up patty sausage instead of bacon. And never eat it on Fridays, or you'll have to do an extra decade of the rosary. Like I'll have to do.