Gruel Over Grits. What’s a Southern Girl to Do?

Gruel Over Grits. What’s a Southern Girl to Do?

I see Dickensian school boys with soot all over their faces. Arms outstretched holding wooden bowls.     

I am trying so hard to like oatmeal. Then I think of Oliver Twist. All he wanted was another bowl of porridge and he got thrown out of the orphanage. He must have liked oatmeal a lot. Or been very hungry.

I do get very hungry in the morning. On these cold winter mornings there’s nothing better than fixing a piping hot bowl of gruel’s more voluptuous Southern cousin, grits. I add butter, salt and cheese. A mixture of Romano and Gouda is quite delectable. Nothing satisfies like creamy grits peppered with all kinds of wonderful cheeses. Nothing but another big bowl of the same.

That just makes more of me. Poo. I hate it when that happens.

So when things aren’t working, my New Year’s mantra is to change what I’m doing even if it involves turning my back on an old friend. One who comes to me in the middle of the night and slaps on latex gloves to inject unsightly fatty matter under the skin on back of my thighs. This year, I’m embracing health over heaven. Double poo.

Oliver Twist isn’t the only person who likes oatmeal. Lots of folks do. I just need to sort through these conflicting emotions. Creaminess verses lumpiness. Heavenly cheeses verses bumpy things. Arranged marriages have worked for centuries. Why would I not fall in love with a bowl of porridge?

Eating oats plain doesn’t work, well, unless you’re a horse. It’s like trying to garner someone’s affections. We shower, clip toenails; stifle urges to make bodily noises. Doctor ourselves up real pretty. Oatmeal needs to doll itself up. But there’s no way a lump of oats is going to put on lipstick. Once I take it off the stove top, it just sits there steaming for a while only to congeal into a lump of nothing that no one is going to eat. No, I’ve got to chose a stunning color, open the tube and roll it on for her.

I start with some honey and apples, and then try some cinnamon and walnuts. Don’t forget the raisins. It tastes pretty good but I’m sure that concoction ends up with more calories than my cheese grits. So why do this? Honestly, I have no earthly idea.  I’m just a woman in middle age whose metabolism ticks slower with each oat flake that drops into my bowl. For pity’s sake, I’m trying to crack a code here.

 There are some magical mornings I feel a stirring of emotion. When that bowl of oats is starting to grow on me in a no-personality but loaded-trust fund kind of way. But alas looking at my spoon I know in my heart, it’s like marrying the wrong person because everyone around us is getting married and we don’t want to be the only one at the corporate dinner without a dutiful spouse. (They still have corporate dinners, don’t they?)

Oatmeal is settling. That’s the ugly truth. I want grits and sausage and biscuits with gravy. It’s not the poor porridge’s fault. Grits born and bred, I’m not an oatmeal kind of girl. But a quick glance at my reflection reveals a woman who needs to start searching the cabinets for brown sugar