Do you enjoy grits?

[zimmerstutzen]

The ash that was part of the eastern woodlands diet, was from the practice of heating rocks in a fire and dropping them into the bark stew pots to cook the food. The small amounts of ash did much to convert parts of the corn into digestible nutrition.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

It must be the name GRITS. We have to re-title the stuff American Polenta and charge $6 a pound. All the pinky up crowd will be fighting each other to get it.

BRILLIANT!! :haha:

Only perhaps it should be, fair trade, heirloom, organic, Native polenta.....

LD

 

[Claude Mathis]

It must be the name GRITS. We have to re-title the stuff American Polenta and charge $6 a pound.

Grits are similar to polenta in that they start off as dried kernels of corn which are then ground to a desired consistency, but the main difference between the two is that grits typically start off as hominy before they reach the mill.

The corn used to make grits is often referred to as "dent" because of the indentation found in each corn kernel after it has dried.

Polenta is a dish native to Italy and, similar to grits, is a coarsely ground corn product. Polenta is made with a variety of corn called "flint," which contains a hard starch center. This hard starch provides a distinctly granular texture even after cooking.

 

[satx78247]

Question: What would you call hominy or grits made from flint corn??

PIONEER MILLS here in SA has made both cornmeal & grits for a LONG, LONG time from several kinds of corn, including hard flint corn.

yours, satx

 

[crockett]

Well I am polenta challenged. I thought it was just cornmeal. I didn't know it was a certain type of corn. My brother ate tons of the stuff.
BTW, all this discussion on how the consistency of hulled corn changes. As I said, I noticed on the trail that it was a lot easier to wash out a pot with boiled cornmeal as compared to a pot of boiled grits but I kept quiet on it because I thought people would think I was crazy. I'm glad to know that what I experience has a logical explanation.
One lingering question. All my prior knowledge on this subject was from reading an old Foxfire Book. They had a wood trough with a crack in the bottom. The trough was filled with hardwood ash and pots of water dribbled into it. A dark liquid drained out the crack which they called "lye" and I thought that was poisonous. They used it to take the hulls off corn but then washed the lye off the corn. Now I am reading about ash in biscuits, other food- is ash safe to consume?

 

[coloradoclyde]

From Wikipedia....

Flint corn is also the type of corn preferred for making hominy, a staple food in the Americas since pre-Columbian times.

CORN FIGHT!........... :rotf:

 

[tenngun]

If you make a bread or a steak laid righ on the hot ash on a bed of coals you will get a little ash on it. Ash is alkalitoc and will settle an upset stomach. There is lye in it if you leach you can get that lye water. The little amount of ash you can get on food will have no where near anough to hurt you in any way. Like one aspirin or one tums vs s bottle of it.

 

[Claude Mathis]

From Wikipedia....

Flint corn is also the type of corn preferred for making hominy, a staple food in the Americas since pre-Columbian times.

CORN FIGHT!........... :rotf:

"Dent or Flint?
Corn is classified by the type of starch (endosperm) in its kernels. The premier mill corn of the American South, known as dent (the name derives from the dent that forms on the top of each kernel as it dries), has a relatively soft, starchy center. Dent corn makes easy work of milling--it also makes phenomenal grits.

"Flint corn, by contrast, has a hard, starchy endosperm and produces grittier, more granular meal that offers an outstanding mouthfeel when cooked. One type of American flint--indigenous to the Northeast--was, and remains, the traditional choice for Johnny cakes.

In Italy, flint has been the preeminent polenta corn since the 16th century when Spanish and Portuguese treasure hunters brought Caribbean flint to the Piedmont on ships."

The first corn was taken to Italy in the hold of ships to hide gold and other treasures from pirates on the high seas. However there were famines and the people used it for food. Finding that they liked it, they began to cultivate it in Italy and another New World crop became part of Italian cuisine.

 

[coloradoclyde]

 

[satx78247]

I earlier mentioned PIONEER MILLERS of SA & had to run my friend to the airport so I didn't finish my post.

The Current Pioneer Mills is a successor organization of the community-owned grist mill that was founded 300 years ago on the San Antonio River. - The current company still has the grinding wheels & parts of the allied equipment used to grind meal/flour that the Canary Islanders used 300 years ago.
(San Antonio was actually settled by the Canary Islanders who were "volunteered" by the King of Spain to settle this area of what is now Texas.)

The more that I learn about the ethic geography of Bexar County/San Antonio, the more that I realize that I don't know. = The ethnic history of this area of Texas is at a minimum "complicated", with lots of twists & turns to confuse researchers.
A simplified (but mostly correct) ethnic history of this area is:
1. A hunter-gather culture until the mid-16th Century,
2. Then the Spanish army & the Catholic missionaries moved in & most of the NA left,
3. Then about 3 decades later the Canary Islanders comprised about 75% of the population,
4. Then the "Americanos" started moving in about 1810,
5. After the area became part of the USA in 1845, the Germans & Swiss arrived and for almost a century San Antonio was a MAJORITY German/Swiss city.
6. Then the Eastern European immigrants arrived & the Germans moved north to found "new all-German/Swiss towns" like New Braunfels, Kerrville, Giddings, New Berlin & Shulenberg.
7. Then the Eastern Europeans moved North to found towns like West, Kiev, Moscow & New Bohemia.
8. Then for another 40 years the area was predominately Tejano.
and
9. After about 1880, the city became the polyglot & colorful mixture of every imaginable group, as it is in 2016. - In 2016, Bexar County is about 55% "Spanish surnamed" but presuming that those 55% are actually Spanish/Tejano is a gross & misleading simplification.
(As one example, my good friend Adolpho Jesus Castro de Palma, of Southside SA, calls his large extended family "Tejano-Spanish" but his ancestral tree includes Apaches, Czechs, Sub-Saharan Africans, Scots, Germans, Russian Jews, Basques, Canary Islanders, Irish & likely other groups. = I chuckle to myself when he says, "We are pure Spanish & Apache, clear back to the 1600s." = His "middle son", Steve, has looked up the last 10 generations of their family history & it is as complicated as the history of San Antonio/Bexar county.)

Each of those ethic/racial groups "left their stamp upon" the city/county & in particular upon what we now call "South Texas food" where a person, in a 15 minute drive, can have sauerbraten tacos, Lithuanian/Tejano chorizo, Basque-style enchiladas & Pan-Asian chili con carne. - One large local café advertises that they "specialize" in Thai-Tejano foods.
(Is that "confusing" enough for you?)

yours, satx

 

[Nativearizonan]

You forgot the Irish.

 

[satx78247]

The Brits, Irish, Welch & Scots (which is my mother's side of the family) I counted as "Americanos", I guess. - The first persons who have an "identifiably" Irish surname arrived in Nacogdoches, New Spain in 1811.
Also, we had 11 Irish martyrs to Texas Liberty at the Battle of Fortress Alamo, as well as 8 Scots, who came to SA from "the old sod".
(I did mention the Irish with some of the ethnic influences in my friend's extended family, who thinks of himself as "pure" Tejano-Apache.)

SORRY to have NOT included the Irish as a separate group.
(My DNA study indicates that I'm 16% Irish AND I've recently learned that one of my HOT-HEADED ancestors lost his to the Brits in the 18th century.- Seems that there was a question about the ownership of some "possibly lost or strayed" livestock. = CHUCKLE)

A personal note: The "Queen's Daughter", who married an ancestor in the 19th Century & that I've mentioned elsewhere was probably an Irish lass, as she is described as having a "lovely temperament, beautiful face, was of red hair near unto her knees & with luminous green eyes", was Roman Catholic & she "was bundled off to Galveston" from what is today called Northern Ireland/Ulster.
(I don't know much more about her, as she always said that her parents died when she was "a babe in arms" and she "dropped her maiden name" when she married "just off the boat".)

yours, satx

 

[Nativearizonan]

My mother-in-law was from that part of TX and was mostly Irish. I won't go in to the hot headed part of their nature.

Here is an interesting piece on the "Irish Flats" part of San Antonio, settled in the 1830s:
http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/...e-Irish-Flats-of-San-Antonio-South-Texas.html

It is also interesting one of the early Spanish Governors of TX was an Irish Catholic who may have fled to Spain to avoid English persecution.
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/foc04

 

[satx78247]

Interesting.

In case you have not tried to trace your Texas roots, you will find that genealogy of Texas families is frequently FRUSTRATING (or sometimes utterly IMPOSSIBLE), as so many "new Texicans" were FLEEING what my Mother charitably calls, "untoward events", "an unfortunate past" & were "seeking a new life".
(A researcher comes to a certain point in time & finds previous to that date: NOTHING.)

I find it rather sad that there is essentially no place left on Planet Earth that a person can start over with "a clean slate".

yours, satx

 

[tenngun]

Irish in general are hard to trace before 1880s or so. Records are full of a person with the same name, often in the same area about the same age.

 

[satx78247]

Also 100% true.

In a few of the family's "Irish lines", I'm back to the 16th Century but in many cases there is NOTHING known from before they immigrated to the Western Hemisphere.

yours, satx

 

[tenngun]

My wife went on acestory . com, Her German and English ancestors were easy(er) to track. Her Irish not so much. She has Id'ed 6 guys in the K.C. area that could be an ancestor. All played fast and loose with mairrage some may have been the same guy in two or more homes. Trying to jump a generation and back track it even gets worse. I wonder how many families were abandoned during the starving time, how many deserters from the good army or the blue one just fell off the records.
I have an great great uncle who 'went south'(that part of the family was living in ohio since the 1790s)just after the WBTS and disappeared, no doubt a carpet bagger :redface:

 

[omarick1948]

Says it all! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM0DXaRZL1Y

 

[satx78247]

YEP. It says that "ding-a-lings" out of NYC don't have the good taste to eat grits.
(ImVho, the only good thing about that movie was Marisa Tomei, who "stole the show".)

At 52YO, she is still a GOOD-looking woman too.

yours, satx

 

[tenngun]

And the moral of the story was ...dah,dah,dah, Vinny exonerated the boys because he learned about grits, and his girl knew cars....kinda sounds like dukes of hazard :haha:
Could it be more simple? Peace in our time if more people learned about grits and the life style of paitince that comes from slowly cooking them?
Friends, country men, brothers and sisters imbrace the grit and girls who know cars.