Our students have always asked when we would make a breakfast from the United States, so this week we celebrated one of our country’s indigenous breakfast foods, grits. Grits come from the Native American Muskogee tribe, the people who first ground corn in a stone mill, giving the dish its signature coarse, gritty texture. We compared grits to the oat porridge we cooked from Finland and the rice porridge we cooked from China - all of these food traditions revolve around a thick mixture of cooked grains or seeds served with delicious toppings.
We worked with proper South Carolina stone-ground grits, both yellow and white, cooking them with whole milk and vegetable stock to form a savory base for our meal. Then we shook our own butter, sautéed the first asparagus of the season with garlic, grated cheddar cheese, snipped green onions, diced peppers, cut lemons, and minced parsley. We didn’t even miss the shrimp, and it was fun to hear a couple of kids remark that they would try and eat grits every morning from now on.
