Food and Health?

You should have shrimp and grits. OH MY! One of the best things ever. People in the Carolinas even it it for breakfast.

I grew up eating grits and love them. I also like them with tomato gravy on them. And take leftover grits put them in a loaf pan and refrigerate.
The next morning, you slice it, dip it in egg and fry them in a skillet where you've fried bacon. OMG, they are wonderful. Fried grits.

And cheese grits casserole with jalepenos is awesome too.

Grits started out as a Native American dish and they introduced them to the English who came here in the 1600's and they called it rockahemminie. The english anglicized it to hominy and the rest is history. Hominy grits is how it used to be called, but the hominy got dropped and now hominy is a different thing all together, but it's also made from corn. Grits is just a corruption of the word grist which a grist mill is where they ground corn to make grits.
And that is the brief history of grits. :)

I'm a student at your feet MRD. I love it when you talk food history.

Has anyone considered food and health might be an oxymoron on a day like today?? I'm stuffed!!!

MRD--thanks for the info on grits! As soon as I can move enough to get to the store I am going to try some of those grits recipes.

Love me some grits!



Columbia--Oh yes--what we suffer in order to carry on the thousands years' tradition of marking the harvest with feasting. Oh my....:nod

Columbia--Oh yes--what we suffer in order to carry on the thousands years' tradition of marking the harvest with feasting. Oh my....:nod[/QUOTE]


Wind Dancer -- the older I get, the less inclined I am to "suffer" in this manner.
Oh, my, indeed!!! :laugh

Thought I'd share how I made cranberry chutney (a variation of the one that Jacque Pepin made on "Julia and Jacques - Cooking At Home".

1 bag of frozen cranberries (about 2 cups)
1 Granny Smith apple (diced)
1 Tbsp or so of vinegar
2 tsps or so of lemon juice
1/2 - 3/4 C sugar
juice of 3 oranges
a few strips of orange zest

Thaw the cranberries and put into a saucepan. Quarter the squeezed oranges and add them and the rest of the ingredients and simmer until the cranberries pop, or longer if mixture is still too thin. Stir occasionally until mixture is thickened. Be sure the heat is not too high to cause mixture to stick (or burn) on the pan bottom. Pull oranges out, allow chutney to cool and then chill it in the refrigerator. (I'll bet it freezes and thaws well.)

Mine took about 20-25 minutes because I wanted it thick, but the cranberries cooked further down than I had planned, and there was some pan stickage. Next time I will leave out the vinegar or use less; it might have caused the cranberry breakdown? Or maybe less orange juice, which lengthened the cookdown time...

It was still delish and got rave reviews.

I hesitate to put a sugar recipe in "Food and Health", but cranberry chutney was posted about here already. ;)

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Originally Posted by VelvetRed;3758189;

I hesitate to put a sugar recipe in "Food and Health", but cranberry chutney was posted about here already. ;)

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Velvet -- it doesn't hurt to have something "naughty" once in a while. Just my opinion!!!

I'll post my grits recipes in the just recipe thread. They don't belong in food and health. :lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wind Dancer;3755703;

LOL!

As an aside--having studied Cultural Anthropology I know that those big yams are the basic food source for many Indigenous Peoples like many of the Peoples in the Highlands of New Guinea. And they really do celebrate the yams--they have ceremonies of thanksgiving for good crops--and some groups even decororate the largest yam and honor it with a special ceremony.

I'm thinking we could learn a thing or two about being grateful for "what we have received" from these folks. :nod

(I"m going to see if I can find a photo of one of these ceremonies with the decorated yam. Their size really is impressive.)

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WindDancer, I agree. This reminds me of the Festival of Grains that I went to in Italy this past August. People from all over neighbouring towns attended the festival which was held in a town, pop of 100. They had old farm machinery teaching the children, all sorts of activites for the kids, tons of food being cooked out doors, and wonderful music where people danced under the stars. The children (not sure where they came from because the town couldn't have that many kids) helped take paper plates away from the people that were seated. They were adorable. The idea behind that is to make sure they learn and can carry on the tradition for many more years to come.

ETA I forgot! Another town had The Festival of Garlic!!! :)

Guardian Angel-thanks for those great descriptions. (And lucky you for being able to travel to Italy!)

In thinking about what you've described I realized that these harvest festivals are similar to ones I attended in certain parts of the midwest while going to university that were surrounded by farming communities.

There were many "Corn Festivals" and at some the corn was cooked and handed out for free to all comers. And then people were also given corn to take home with them. When I asked the farmers about this generosity on their part they said it was their way of being thankful for good harvests--their way of "giving back" so to speak.

It is a lesson I never forgot.

BTW--at the time I was a student of Anthropology and I could easily see in these community-wide festivals a continuation in time from all harvest festivals ever since the beginning of human attempts at agriculture.

It was a very warm and deep feeling to be connected to this unbroken line even in that small way.



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Interesting about that Italian Garlic Festival. Do you know about Gilroy CA? They have a very famous Garlic Fesival too. Famous among garlic lovers anyway. :laugh
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