THE SOUTH: It’s a Long Time between Grits

In the lexicon of Brillat-Savarin, world-renowned gourmet, there is no such word as grits,* But in the U.S. South, from plantation mansion to tenant shack, grits has been part of a way of life for generations. Many Southerners eat grits with every meal, few understand why Yankees find it insipid.

But all understood one fact last week: there was hardly any grits to be bought anywhere in the South. With U.S. corn stocks depleted, and price ceilings making it more profitable for farmers to feed their corn to hogs than sell it to gristmills, the gastronomic customs of the South were shaken to their foundations.

At Charleston’s famed Citadel, where military-minded young Southerners go to learn soldiering, a tradition of 100 years was broken when no grits was available for breakfast. Vexed South Carolina housewives started a small boom in hand gristmills, scoured the countryside in search of corn.

Said one countryman: “If you want to eat corn, you’d better be a hog.” Headlined the Charleston, S.C. News & Courier: “CALAMITY.”

* Grits (also called hominy or hominy grits) is a coarsely ground, somewhat glutinous meal made from corn, is eaten with melted butter or hot gravy.