Gritting my teeth

I am a grits-loving girl. My grandma B, who died in 2002, grew up in impoverished Georgia eating pretty much just grits. She raised her kids on it (one of whom is my father), and they in turn have raised all their kids on it. I have memories from as far back as I can remember of huge family sized pots of grits cooking away on the stove at her house, at my house, at our family cabin, etc. Our toppings of choice were are butter, bacon, and LOTS of cheese...like pulling-up-strings-of-melted-cheese-with-every-spoon-full lots.

When my grandma went into Hospice to live out her final days, not 24 hours after the entire family celebrated her 50th Anniversary with my grandpa, she requested in her small voice to have grits for every meal. The wonderful thing is, she got them.

So yeah, grits = important in my world.

Sadly, Appa hates grits. He thinks they taste like cardboard; a sentiment that I have found over the years most people in the West and Midwest seem to espouse. Seriously people, grits is some good eating!

I gave up forcing Appa to eat my grits, but told him that I had no intention of letting my family's tradition end on my branch of the family tree. He can nimble on bacon while the rest of our family twirls our melted cheese strings in delicious fun.

It's been a while since I made grits. I just kept forgetting to buy them. I recently made my not-such-a-baby baby sister a care package for college and included a can of grits, so I bought one for myself, along with awesome new instant packets for work. I've been riding the grits train for a couple days and loving it! Naturally, I decided it was time to introduce grits to Little Bug.

Saturday morning I made a medium sized pot while reliving fun memories of my childhood. I loaded Little Bug's bowl up with cheese and bacon and butter and settled in to watch his life change.

Only it didn't. He hated them.

Appa, in a very unsportsmanlike manner, laughed...a lot. Little Bug yelled "na" and covered his offended mouth until I broke down and gave him an Eggo waffle. I died a little inside.

I'm not giving up. I'm going to continue to try to get Little Bug to like grits. I'm going to continue to make them and get sentimental each time I so much as smell them. I will continue to honor that part of my heritage in my own little edible way.

I might be eating a huge pot of grits by myself though.