Breakfast to Dinner with Grits

Growing up as a kid, Saturday mornings were a time when you not only did chores but you could get a heartier breakfast than you would normally have during the school week. For me, if I stayed by my cousins it meant stew fish with johnny cake/bread and grits, tuna and grit, corned beef and grits or boiled fish with grits…basically something was gona be eaten with grits. I would make a pretty safe bet that this is how many Bahamians have come to know grits.

Grits, or polenta is basically coarsely-grounded corn and Quaker is a brand of grits commonly found in food stores. They usually sell it in white or yellow and you have instant which should cook in 5 minutes and the regular which requires about 20 minutes (at least)to cook. Personally, I prefer the yellow grits because it just has an authentic, “real” taste to it. Some people prefer white grits, which also takes less time to prepare.

I had never heard grits be referred to as polenta. Even during my college culinary years I hadn’t been exposed to the “polenta”. A Bahamian acquaintance brought back to Kansas some yellow grits for me so I was super happy and began to imagine how many Saturdays I would eat grits with a mushroom stir-fry and avocado (because no grits and eggs, or sausage, or bacon). When I showed my Chilean born boss, he said “Oh , polenta!” And I said who?? He said polenta. Thus began my Pinterest adventures to find ways of spicing up this here polenta. I was fascinated at the ways other folk prepared it, namely the fried polenta cakes.

This past weekend after I made a batch of grits, I decided why not try one of these polenta recipes. Here is my final result.

After I cooked the polenta, I immediately poured it into a small aluminum tin bread loaf pan so that it could cool and take shape. I left in the refrigerator until I was ready to cook. The next day, I popped it out the pan and cut into rectangle pieces. I let each side fry a good 5 minutes, although I’m sure that was way more time than it needed. While this was going on, I sauteed some red spinach along with shiitake and button mushrooms in another frying pan. I also had some tomato sauce and a can of tomatoes and green chiles. I threw this into another pan and simmered with some olive, garlic, salt, basil and oregano seasonings until the mushrooms were done.

My cousin inquired as to the taste…It’s grits, what is there not to like?! When I cooked it, I made sure to add some vegan butter and salt to give it a little flavor. The stir-fry and the spicy marinara sauce were a great addition. Shiitake mushrooms are bomb!

I imagine this can be eaten at any time of day, I know I sure enjoyed it for dinner. Polenta/grits is a food that I would recommend for a weekend brunch and pinterest has so many receipes from sweet polenta pancakes to polenta crust pizza.

Mealy Pics

Because avocado makes it healthier. They were probably fried in the oil that many chicken tenders were in but that’s what happens when you’re low on food at home and you’re hungry at work.

Brown rice and a tofu stirfry and some carrots that I peeled using my Veggetti thingamajig. Turns any vegetable into spaghetti sorta. I like it because I hate cutting carrots. Oh yea, almost forgot the sweet potate there. I’m appreciating tofu slowly. I like that it takes on flavors of other ingredients and sauces. I used an Asian sweet chili sauce for the stirfry and threw a few pieces of pineapple in there.

Breakfast on the weekends. I love making pancakes for Saturday and Sunday mornings. My pancakes are not burnt, they’re just well done! I use Aunt Jemima’s whole wheat mix but two of them on the plate have chocolate chips in them.

The Oatmeal Battle

As I sit here eating my bowl of steal cut oats, my mind goes back to a conversation I had with my cousin about which type of oatmeal was best: steel cut or rolled oats.

Prior to the conversation I had done very little research on the two but I had heard that steel cut oats was the better choice which led to me buying it to try out. I found a pretty neat infographic that does a good job comparing the two which I’ll share below. Differences I’ve noticed are that rolled oats get their name because they are literally rolled and pressed out to the flattened shape while steel cut oats are simply cut up. This makes for a difference in texture when cooked and also length of time to cook. Steel cut oats take hella long to cook. Time, that as a working graduate student I’d rather spend sleeping in the morning. I’m trying to do my primary shopping at Aldi’s these days so I can’t say that I’ve noticed a big difference price wise.

 

All in all, I think either one will do because anything is better than quick oats. I will be going back to regular rolled oats after this container is done.