Grits (Geez, I don't know: 50 cents?; about half an hour)

Technically, these are jalapeno cheese grits (milled locally).

And what about those pasty white crap grits you might find at, oh, Waffle House, that were made about 4 in the morning in a huge vat and have been cooking now for about ten hours -- if, by cooking, you mean "sitting over a moderate heat and stirred when one of the toothless but nice waitresses remembers they're there" -- into something resembling plastinated paper pulp that can only be swallowed with lakes, and I mean LAKES, of butter and about six fistfuls of salt -- or, otherwise, have to be stirred onto runny eggs, filled with bacon bits, decorated with cheese, and sopped up with white toast, and then still are less palatable than used TP?

What about them? Pig food, I say. Worse. They should be used for gluing pasta to construction paper in kindergarten classrooms.

Look, Elmer's glue, though edible, is disgusting. Waffle House grits, like the insta-grits you buy at the store, is disgusting. Unless you were starving to death, why would you eat that? It's an act of political solidarity to refuse them, I think, because grits is something the know-nothings north of here hold against us. Grits, they say, snorting. Who would eat something like THAT? Then they sit down to a bowlful of cream of wheat -- or worse, lutefisk on whipped potatoes -- and see no irony at all.

Then they set up companies like Quaker Oats (a division of PepsiCo.! Now you know they're both evil and not from around here) to sell us "instant" grits in little packets, flavored like "artificial butter" or, God forfend, sweetened with sugar. GAH. It's Reconstruction all over again, the repulsive Quaker Co. carpetbaggers and their incomprehension. They should all get yellow fever is what I say, take it home with them, and come back only when they can appreciate grits.

But first we have to make good grits available and banish the bad grits.

[Are you thinking of My Cousin Vinny (the best I could find)? Because I am. Or wait: "The grits is cold" -- Bette Davis (6:30-6:50). The Little Foxes. Lillian Helman was a genius, and so was good old Bette.]

Now, I know you're thinking: with that lead in, how could this be anything you'd want to make? I think you ask this reasonably. But you remember that I started the stuffed mushrooms with visions of fungusy toenails, and pulled THAT one out of the fire. Have faith, little ones, I can do this.

I will be assisted in this task by my beautiful new bowl, a birthChristdaymas prezzie from the Brickman-Curzons. The bowl was handmade in Tuscaloosa by Neely Portera -- it has a sea-green wash inside, a brownish purple (fig-colored, I think) wash around the outside. Perfect.

The thing you want to do is start with good grits. By which I mean, non-factory grits, grits not imposed on you by the evil machinations of post-Sherman infiltrators.

If you can get them locally, more the better. We use stone-ground grits from Logan Turnpike Mill, which isn't far from where we live (it's in Blairsville). They're extremely coarse-ground and yellow. I prefer yellow because of the color, which isn't just yellow, but a complex mix of everything from deep brown to caramel to sunshine to golden.

Coarse-ground grits are actually better, since they don't dissolve into craptitude when they're cooked. They have actual substance. Which, you know, you probably want in food.

Grits cook at a 3:1 ratio; here, for two of us for breakfast, I've got 1 1/2 c water to 1/2 c grits. It's important to add salt to the boiling water, since for some reason salting grits after you cook them is really difficult to get right. I think I've got a scant tsp. of salt here.

In addition, you'll need some cheese, probably about a 1/4 c shredded (I've used jalapeno jack in the grits and a couple of spoonfuls of shredded cheddar for garnish) and a little jalapeno mash.

Here's how you do this:

1. Put the water and salt in a pan on high heat. Bring to a boil.

2. Dump in the grits. Stir. Turn the heat to medium so they don't pop all over the place. Keep it simmering, though, so don't turn it down too much.

3. Simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring every once in a while, until thickened.

4. Stir in cheese and jalapeno mash.

5. Eat.

See, like biscuits, which people think of as difficult, grits is easy. REALLY easy. Which makes it such an offense against God and nature that good ones are so hard to find.

Oh, and just in case you're in Carrollton, Millers grits --- VERY good. They use cream cheese and a lot of butter as the grits cook. That's another way to do it. They serve theirs with shrimp. Which of course for me ruins the whole thing, but that just makes me weird, I suppose.

There you go (with French toast, my birthday breakfast).