Building Meals and Anson Mills Grits

First of all, yesterday I cooked the Anson Mills organic heritage grains low-country grits I ordered. Oh my!

I had ordered the coarser version–not realizing there was a finer version–but it wouldn’t have really made much difference in cooking time I don’t think. I soaked a cup of the grits in raw whole milk overnight first.

The cooking, using the Anson Mills recipes, is long and slow and “fiddly,” with needed extra water added from time to time. There was nothing difficult at all–it just required time and patience.

But OH MY HEAVENS!! I have never tasted anything so good. I could have eaten the whole pot. I stored the leftovers in the refrigerator and took some out, heated them in the microwave that I use but don’t like, and paired the grits with some scrambled egg for my supper. (I remember both my mother and her sister making grits for breakfast as a treat. And grits would also get paired with fried ham for a supper meal.)

I can’t wait for my noon dinner today: a roasted spatchcocked whole chicken, fresh green beans roasted with other veggies, and MORE GRITS, with some fresh fruit and my espresso for dessert.

The Anson Mills web site has lots of heritage recipes for these special grains: https://www.ansonmills.com. Next up for me, cooking some of the heritage rice I also ordered.

But back to the original topic at hand. I LOVE having refrigerator assets in place, and I use them to create meals each day. Or, I cook up more assets. I usually assemble both dinner and supper at the same time as I like to come down from sewing to a meal all ready to eat. On this day, there was a roasted chicken and many veggies. I made a bowl of food to be warmed for dinner, and a salad for supper.

Here’s a close-up.

I love to drizzle a bit of maple syrup over raspberries mixed with blackberries and blueberries for a special dessert. But organic raspberries are in short supply right now in my area. So I bought some of these big and very sour strawberries. I got so spoiled in Maine with my own strawberries, picked when ripe, or bought locally when ripe. These big and highly colored commercial strawberries arrive green, really. I spread them out and put them in some diffused sun and then left them on the counter overnight. They were better, but tend to mold if not refrigerated and never really ripen well.

It makes me so sad to know that most people have no idea what a ripe strawberry tastes and smells like. Their perfume alone can make one’s kitchen sing, never mind one’s mouth. The sweetness is almost overwhelming.