If You Didn't Want Grits, Why'd You Order Breakfast Then

This is a line from a Lewis Grizzard story about a Yankee who ordered breakfast in a Waffle House. In context, it's probably a lot funnier. Every time I go to Carrollton, Georgia, thoughts of the Greasy Spoon down on the four lane and across the street from Southwire (Scrapwire to those who worked there) remind me of that story. I spent too many nights/mornings after fraternity parties consuming their less than haute cuisine. But, that was forty years ago...

Last weekend for the second year in a row, many of us who were members of the Kappa Phi, subsequently ATO, fraternity gathered for a reunion during homecoming at the State University of West Georgia. It is amazing to me that forty years of gravity, consuming more calories than you burn, ignoring good lifestyle choices, genetics and otherwise "good ol' hard livin'" can alter appearances but it cannot dampen the spirits of a group of boys. Literally, within minutes of seeing someone you haven't laid eyes on in two score years, it is as though there has been no passage of time at all, almost. Yeah, it sorta looks like we're all attending a Halloween costume party where everyone showed up dressed as their grandparents, but that soon passes and through our Lenscrafters-assisted eyes we are all pretty much the same as we were then (with less hair and more belly, of course).

For the record, those pretty girls we dated then are still pretty girls and they are some damn lucky boys who were able to convince those girls to marry them. That is not to say that along the way the others of us were not able to find some pretty girls of our own, too. As a matter of personal confession, I believe with all my heart the girl who is my last wife is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. (Okay, so it took me a couple or three times to get it right, but I finally did. So shut up, and let's get on with it...)

One of the strongest memories for all of us was our fraternity fund raisers. This consisted of everyone piling into cars before sunrise on a Saturday morning and driving to the Krispy Kreme Doughnut store on Ponce de Leon where we would fill the trunks with a couple hundred boxes of warm doughnuts and then scatter to various points around town to sell them on street corners. On an average weekend we would pull in a couple of thousand dollars! Thanks to Krispy Kreme, we furnished the fraternity house with carpet, some of the tackiest black and gold velvet (French Provincial) furniture on earth, and we threw some of the most incredible parties you have ever seen.


But, it also was hard work, it bonded a bunch of boys together for life, and it gave us something to laugh about in our "long-in-the-tooth" years.

Grits Is Just Little Taters

I live in a weird neighborhood made up mostly of people who are not from around here and southerners who have forgotten they are from around here. For example, their kids have no idea what it means to have manners. They would rather die than say "Yes ma'am," "No ma'am,"or "Thank you, sir." No, that's not right. They don't use manners because they haven't been taught them. Indeed, as your mama would say, "They's ain't been raised right."


And here's another thing that just chaps my ass. Recently, I began an exercise program which involves walking through the neighborhood. Some of the road has sidewalks, a lot of it doesn't. Drivers around here think there is some kind of sport in seeing just how close they can come to you in their SUVs and Lexuses (Lexi?) and BMWs without actually hitting you as they approach the speed of light. On the other hand, these same people will stop and patiently wait for five minutes while a flock of Canadian geese waddle down and across the street. I don't get it.


Okay, you're asking, how does this relate to food? Well, some time during the last century I lived in north Florida and I had occasion to need the shingles on the roof of my house replaced. I hired a guy, Jerry Wayne, to do the job. He was from a very rural area called Madison and he was salt of the earth, poor as a church mouse, cracker. He had some of his teeth, more tattoos than skin and a fine looking mullet hairdo. He was long and lanky, wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off, with washed out, hole riddled Levi's long before they became a fashion statement. He made Joe Dirt look suave and debonair. One day, while Jerry Wayne was on the roof in triple-digit Florida sun, I was out in the yard lamenting what to do about the fire ants that had overtaken the place. Jerry Wayne saw me and decided to see what I was up to. He lumbered over to where I was swatting and cussing fire ants for all I was worth. "Grits," he said. "Huh? Sum-bitch piss ants!" I said as fifty of the little bastards attacked my left ankle. "Grits. Yep, grits will get rid of them piss ants. Them ants will eat grits and then the grits will swell up in they's bellies and make 'em explode. You know, grits is just little taters, and when them piss ants eat 'em, well you know, they's just gone explode." Well, I'll be a biscuit eating, egg sucking dog, I thought, how do you argue with that?

On the whole, I would rather spend a month with Jerry Wayne than thirty seconds with an East Snobber.

Bless Her Heart, She Can't Help It (That She's a Yankee)

Carol and I just got back from a visit to her home town out on the eastern end of Long Island. We were up there for her high school reunion. The number evades me right now, but it is more than five years since she graduated from Greenport High School. There were sixty-four seniors in her graduating class and I have to hand it to them, they do a pretty good job of getting together for their reunions every five years. This year the food was catered by a (relatively recently) married couple in the class. Mary Ann Sledjeski Costello's father owned and operated Porky's Restaurant so she and her husband Tom put together an amazing array of finger foods and hors d'oevres including a fillet mignon on a slice of toasted french bread, crabmeat with dill sauce and poached salmon with cucumber. But my favorite was a dried apricot with walnut and blue cheese topping that was to die for--yummy!

The actual reunion party was held on Friday evening at Founders Landing in Southold overlooking Peconic Bay. It was a long evening as the outsider spouse whose lack of "history" was sometimes painfully obvious. I am sure that anyone who has attended a spouse's reunion can identify with me...the things we do for marital harmony. On the other hand, it is fun to allow yourself to just be the almost invisible and completely insignificant afterthought you are and observe the "process". Here are a few of my observations: Cliques that existed in high school don't go away. Sometimes there are late bloomers that no matter how hard you tried, you could not have predicted how great these people would have turned out and some of the ones who had the world by the ass in high school just haven't been able to do anything with it. And here is the big aha--life happens. Yep, profound ain't it. Good and bad events occur in life that are neither predictable nor preventable, and they make us who we are.

But wait, here is what I really wanted to address in this blog: in a couple of weeks the Cutchogue Volunteer Fire Department is having their annual barbeque chicken dinner fund raiser. According to one of Carol's classmates, they have a world famous "secret" recipe for their barbeque marinade. I understand that Martha Stewart attended the festivities last year, but was not able to get them to share their secret marinade recipe with her. This was said with an absolute straight face, more than a little bit of pride, and complete and total ignorance to the fact that there was a son of the South standing right there in their midst. This is where it gets tricky because no matter how hard I try, I cannot reconcile those two diametrically opposed terms and put them in the same sentence--Yankee and barbeque. Think about it for a minute. See what I mean? The only way I can do it is to say, "Yankees don't know nothing 'bout no barbeque." Chowder? No problem. Pasta? Ok, it works for me. But barbeque? Pllleeeaaassseeee.

The World's Best Brunswick Stew

When I was a kid the senior class at our high school would always have a barbeque fundraiser to help pay for the annual senior trip to Washington, D. C. The menu was always the same year after year for as far back as I can remember--barbeque pork and Brunswick stew with a side of chips and sweet pickles, and of course, white loaf bread. It stayed that way until I was a senior when a fancy pants new teacher came along from some Alabama school like Troy State where she thought she was hot stuff and she knew better than we simpletons from a mill town. She decided a spaghetti dinner would be a better than "a silly ole bbq, who eats that trash anyway", but all she did was ruin a tradition, and cost each senior an extra hundred dollars for the trip to make up for the fiasco of a flop she served up as a senior dinner. We won't get into how she also ruined our yearbook, too. She was the first woman I ever knew who richly deserved to be called a bitch.

But I digress. The overnight ritual of cooking barbeque involved tending to huge wash pots full of a mysterious concoction that as the sun rose in the eastern sky over the Sportman's Club would somehow evolve into Brunswick stew. It was the job of the boys in the senior class, and anybody else they could recruit, to serve as laborers whose primary job it was to stir those pots containing the stew. Being young and stupid, (a dangerous combination, but not uncommon as adolescent boys go) we were thrilled at the chance to participate in the action. I must say, the first ten minutes or so of standing over a pot with a boat paddle to stir the mixture was shear delight. One would be so filled with such excitement and genuine pride at the idea of being part of the team, it sometimes took twelve or fifteen minutes for reality to set in and to realize how long a night could be and a whole lot of stirring was going to be required. Thank goodness there was always enough boys on hand to pass the paddle off. Still, this was an all-nighter that seemed to last a week.

The guru of stew was Mr. Jackson. Ed was his first name, I believe, but don't hold me to it. His recipe for Brunswick stew, as far as I am concerned, set the gold standard for what stew is supposed to taste like. Decades of experience has taught me that what makes a certain food taste good is what you were raised on. Barbeque and Brunswick stew are two of those foods.

Every summer, Southern Living magazine publishes its annual barbeque edition which is a compilation from around the south on what each region considers their best fare. From the Carolinas to Texas, from Kentucky to Florida and all points in between there are articles on different meats, cooking techniques, sauces and side dishes. To be sure, each is convinced his is the best what ever was. If you don't believe them, why hell, they have a trailer full of trophies to prove it! When you see what these folks try to pass off as legitimate southern cuisine, sometimes it's almost laughable. For the record, let's be perfectly clear: brisket (or anything else from a cow), lamb, goat, sheep, deer, 'possum, squirrel, shunk, armadillo, etc. is NOT barbeque. Barbeque is pork. Period. And Brunswick stew does not have potatoes, orka, beans or beef in it. To be legitimate, honest to God, Brunswick stew, it will be ground in a meat grinder and will contain corn, chicken, pork, tomatoes, and onions (with a few secret ingredients).

Enough said. Let me get to the point of this post: A couple of years ago my brother, Tim, gave me his recipe for stew. He told me it was the same one that Mr. Jackson used. I don't actually know if it is or not, but it sure does taste like real stew, the way God intended for it to taste. As a disclaimer, be forewarned; you can't make a little bit of Brunswick stew. If you do this recipe as it is written, you will have close to four gallons--enough to give all your relatives and neighbors and still have some left over for your own. Hope you enjoy it.

Uncle Tim’s Old Family Secret Recipe Brunswick Stew
(The way God meant for it to be)
Ingredients:

1 pork shoulder (8-10 lbs)

2 chicken broilers (4-5 lbs ea)
8 (15 oz) cans of whole kernel corn

4 (15 oz) cans of creamed corn
12 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes

3 (64 oz) bottles ketchup
3 medium sweet onions

2 sticks butter
2 ± cups chicken broth

Black pepper—to taste
Cayenne pepper—go ahead, fire it up

Salt to taste
Tabasco sauce—see above

Secret herbs and spices

Cooking directions:
In separate pots, boil the pork shoulder and chickens until done. Reserve the chicken broth. Meanwhile, to occupy your time, run the corn, onions, and tomatoes through the grinder attachment to the Kitchenaide mixer (Don’t have a mixer with grinder attachment? Go get one--can’t do this without one if you want to learn to make good stew!). As you pass the veggies through the grinder, be careful not to push too hard or too fast. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, smart-ass, give that first can of tomatoes a good shove down the grinder mouth and redecorate the kitchen walls. My brother, Tim, whose basic recipe this is, taught me to run all the ingredients through the grinder twice, but it is a matter of personal preference. After squishing in the grinder, put into a large, and I do mean large, pot—a cast-iron wash pot works best (clothes removed from pot, of course). After the meats have fully cooked, remove from the bone, cool, and cut into cubes before passing through the grinder. After grinding, place meat into the pot and add ketchup and first dose of black and red peppers. Go light on the ketchup at first; you can always add more later on as the stew brews, but you can’t take it away if you put too much in.
At this point you can turn on the heat, somewhere between simmer and low, and start stirring. I suppose it is time to tell you the real secret to good stew—elbow grease. That’s right, work. From the time you put the heat on, until it is finished and ready to eat, you will not leave the sight of this concoction. The last thing you want to have happen is for the stew to stick to the bottom of the pot, and believe me it will, unless you stir. Nothing ruins good stew faster than black wads of scorched stew that tells the whole damn world you were too lazy to stir a pot for a little while. So don’t be a slacker.
As the stew warms up, add one stick of softened butter and a cup of chicken broth. Now, here is your opportunity to be a little original—add Tabasco sauce, another stick of softened butter, a little more broth, black pepper and red cayenne pepper, and salt to suit your taste. The stew will cook slowly. The key is the flavor of the onions which will evolve from a predominate taste, and then it will melt into the stew and become almost imperceptible as it blends in with all the other ingredients. If you want to make good stew, be patient and take lots of time, cook low and slow, and stir often. You won’t be disappointed.

Footnote: Because it takes so long to cook this recipe, over time I have learned the best technique is to cook the meat, and grind the veggies and meat and put it in the icebox overnight and then cook the stew the next day.

As a rule, I half this recipe and it makes enough stew for an after-church Sunday dinner gathering and still send the preacher home with a covered dish for later.