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.

Vegan Duff!

One of the reasons I am enjoying this culinary experience as a vegan is because it forces me to step outside of my cooking comfort zone at times in an effort to not get bored with my food and show others that choosing to remove animal products from one’s diet doesn’t mean you’ll spend your days just eating lettuce and carrots. It’s actually far from that, although from time to time I do enjoy a simple bowl of lettuce. But anyway, next to rum cake, guava duff is an iconic dessert in Bahamian dishes. It is not for the dieter or the weight watcher because the sauce alone has sugar in three forms and lots of butter.

Learning how to make it was a personal culinary accomplishment because it’s not as simple as baking a cake and whipping up a sauce. I also believe that all Bahamians should work towards keeping our heritage alive through food and passing down these traditional dishes. Only since being away at school have I ventured into making it myself. When I visited home during breaks, one of my food quests always involved finding guava duff that was reminiscent of the ones older people I grew up around  made. Here is more about my other duff adventures.

So, since being here I’ve made guava duff for the international food festival to sell and I’ve made it for personal enjoyment and the feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s really good. Sometimes it’s hard to find guavas though. I go into the food store and I have to start off by explaining what a guava is.

There are pink guavas and white guavas. In The Bahamas they’re sold canned with no seeds in syrup. They also grow in people’s backyards. Here, I’ve been able to find them a few times in the Hispanic food aisles.

One of my concerns with making the duff has been the lack of eggs in the dough. I know there are egg replacements out there but the one that I bought (literally called Egg Replacer) is a hit and miss. To me it just seems like adding a slushy starch to an already starchy item wouldn’t work.

In the first two duffs, I made them the traditional way of boiling them. The result was a dense dough. The other two I baked in a water bath and the results were much better. They turned out the way a typical non-vegan duff turns out when I boil it. I think it was due to it not having eggs in it but I could be wrong.

Here is the recipe that I used. I simply swapped out items for non

Soy-rious Situation

Soyrizo. Tofu. Edamame. Soy cheese.  These are just a few additions to my diet since January. While the health aspect of this journey has been mostly consistent, I have noticed one change: an increase in premenstrual symptoms. My whole situation has always been very painful and multi-symptomatic and I’ve been looking at more natural ways to eliminate some of these symptoms. Through my research it was recommended to avoid dairy products so I did that but there wasn’t much change. And since going vegan more symptoms have come along which I attribute to the influx of soy in my diet. I’ve been reading so much stuff on the harmful affects on soy, even the non-GMO stuff. I also read how it can disrupt your hormones as it is estrogenic.

This has made me realize that in order to keep my sanity during those times, I will need to cut down and cut out as much soy as I can or at the very least go back to the amounts I was accustomed to before the change.

 

Here are some tips on how one person cured their PMS.

The Veggie Hotdog

I really liked the soyrizo that I bought so I kinda had high hopes for the veggie hotdog.

I made an open faced sandwich of the sorts just to give it a try. It was not so hot in my book. It just tasted like a bland, saltless substitute so that you don’t feel left out at the family barbeque. I tried eating it again with another meal… Just as tasteless. Although if you eat it on it’s own it has the faint resemblance of our saltier unhealthy friend THE Real Hotdog. I won’t be buying that again. Some things are better left alone. The veggie dog for me is one. I won’t give up on exploring different veggie or soy meat substitutes though. YOLO!