Seahawks (9-4) vs. Cooking (Grits with Ham and Homemade Applesauce)

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs

One of our best friends from college spurned her native Portland to live in a cabin deep in the North Carolina woods. The place is so remote that she has only has one line for phone and internet…yeah.

We asked her advice when preparing a Carolina dish, and she told us in no uncertain terms that we had to make grits. We found a recipe with grits and a Whole Foods shopping list of ingredients, and ran it past her. This was her response:

"Oh hell no, don’t use that recipe. Grits in The South have four ingredients: grits, water, butter, cheese. Some people add Tabasco sauce or salt to taste. The whole thing gets cooked in one pot. Period. The recipe comes from you mom's mom, a.k.a. your grandma, it's a family recipe, and no matter what anybody says, your recipe is the best."

For you latte-sipping, wine-cellaring, Soviet-flag-hoisting Northwesterners, grits are ground corn turned into a porridge-like substance. They are a staple of Southern breakfasts, kind of like flax up here.

Along with the grits we’ll be cooking up some ham and applesauce. Both pork and apple-based dishes are quite common in Carolina recipes, most going back generations.

As a special treat, and because we didn’t learn our lesson last week on the struggle to make something that you can easily buy, we’ll be making the applesauce from scratch.

We'll report back on Monday, and if you think you're so fucking great why not try and make the stuff as well. Then we can all compare notes as our college buddies stare at us disapprovingly.

Grandma Seattlest's Recipe for Grits
Recipe for Applesauce

Photo of the Blue Ridge Mountains by Katey Schultz taken from her cabin. Sure the view is amazing and the rent is next to nothing, but on the downside there's no traffic.