I awoke this morning to the smell of grits. The distinct scent overtook the entire house heavily and richly filling the air. I can't recall a morning when that smell didn't greet me. I liked them best when Granny cooked them. She would take her time and let them cook long enough to thicken to the point where her heavy cooking spoon would actually stand straight up inside the heavy metal pot. Then she would season them with coarse sea salts and fresh ground pepper.
That was how we would start each day. First humbled in prayer then we would sit down and enjoy a delicious breakfast of hot biscuits made from scratch drizzled in blackstrap molasses, thick cured bacon slabs with crispy, crunchy edges, sweet coffee rich with chickory and evaporated milk, and creamy thick yellow grits with fresh butter melting on top.
When I was younger I used to pour molasses all over my grits and eat them sweet-sweet until my cousin Nita saw me do it and she wrinkled her nose is disgust. "That's nasty" she said as she pointed directly at my plate. I hung my head in shame and quietly ate my sweetened grits in silence. After that I never poured molasses on my grits again.
This morning I can hear Mama banging around in the kitchen. She is impatiently hitting the spoon against the edge of the cooking pot which is filled with boiling water and instant grits. She insist that we eat them each morning out of tradition but those grits out of the box just don't have the same appeal as those thick yellow grits that Granny used to cook.
Sometimes Mama rushes around like it seems she's doing this morning and those instant store bought grits get lumpy. Other times she'll put too much salt in them but we will still eat them even though they taste like the salt air that blows in off of the sound. Usually that happens when Mama is running late for work as her job a maid at the hotel on the island.
(c) 2001
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Reviewed by Cathy Montgomery
3/26/2002
Well...going on to the other continuations! This is good...I want to read more!
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A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
3 WAY MIRROR is about a lost identity as experienced by a twenty-eight-year old who thinks he's Charles Randall, until strange events suggest otherwise.
I awoke this morning to the smell of grits. The distinct scent overtook the entire house heavily and richly filling the air. I can't recall a morning when that smell didn't greet me. I liked them best when Granny cooked them. She would take her time and let them cook long enough to thicken to the point where her heavy cooking spoon would actually stand straight up inside the heavy metal pot. Then she would season them with coarse sea salts and fresh ground pepper.
