Fellow members of the Almost Noble Order of the Torrified Tongue: OK, allyew DY's who've bad mouthed our Native American-Southern dish: I have spent the weekend meditating on your problem, trying to develop a little pity for your plight & a modicum of tolerance for your misguided tastes. The thought has occurred to me that perhaps you are of the same alien ilk that puts cream & sugar on rice [yecchhh!] and sugar on tomatoes [yarg!]. If you tried to eat grits with cream & sugar you got your just dessert, but your distaste becomes understandable: you were paying the price that Mother Nature nearly always exacts when sacrilege is committed. All right-thinking Southerners *know* from birth that rice & grits are to be eaten with gravy [preferably red-eye], or butter in the catastrophic event that no gravy is available. But anyway: Take the 10 worst comments made about grits on these pages, and multiply by 10. Now you know how *I* personally regard *your* nasty, gloppy, gooey, sticky, tasteless, wallpaperpaste-cum-Plaster-of-Paris mess that you call oatmeal. To prevent this tirade from being completely OT here's my time tested C-H recipe for a smallish batch [serves 2, generously] of ChileGritz. Put 1 1/2 C. water in a pot with 5 Tbs quick grits, a pinch garlic salt, 1 Tb butter and 1 or 2 ripe Habaneros [chopped]. Bring to the boil, stir well, reduce heat to simmer, cover, & cook for 10 minutes. Add grated cheese if you like. Yum! Gene ************************************************* * F. Eugene (Gene) Dunnam * * Gator Slide Farm * * 104 SE 138 Ave. <dunnam@phys.ufl.edu> * * Micanopy, FL 32667 (352) 466-3538 * * <http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~dunnam/Welcome.html>* *************************************************