[AT] OT Redbud/asparagus

[Cecil Monson]

    No, this isn't the food List but this week it has come close, hasn't 
it?  It is a sign
that winter is about over and we can get busy outside pretty soon. I've 
been down
to the garden and am making plans for the coming season.

    As to asparagus, we never boil asparagus. We steam it in a vegetable 
steamer.
And as a matter of fact, we do quite a few vegetables that way. 
Asparagus only
needs to be thoroughly heated anyhow - a couple minutes in the steamer 
will do it
nicely. We serve it with butter or with a white sauce depending on how 
we feel that
day. All the white sauce is is a white gravy similar to sausage or 
chipped beef gravy
and easy to make.  And we cut ours just like H. L. and Ron Cook, cut 
just below
the surface with a sharp knife.

    Before I comment on grits (pronounced "grih-yuts" most places I've 
been down
south) I want to say that before I retired, I had men working in the 
South for years.
Generally speaking from North Carolina on the east to Tennessee on the 
north,
Louisiana on the west and southern Florida to the south. They had a 
standing order
to find me any small southern cafe that served a buffet noon meal and an 
invitation
to join me at my expense for lunch. I loved those buffet meals - 
generally they were
put on by 3 or 4 town women who did the cooking, served the food and 
cleaned up
afterwards for something to do and make some extra money. The menu was 
always
about the same - plenty of vegetables, greens with bacon, black eyed 
peas, butter
beans, several kinds of potatoes, some kind of squash, hush puppies as 
well as pone
and cornbread, bread sticks, pork rinds, several kinds of barbecued 
meats, ham,
sausage, and generally two kinds of gravy and spicy rice. Not much room 
left for
dessert but there was usually some kind of cake or pie and soft ice 
cream. And the
iced tea never stopped coming. A great meal and generally the places 
were crowded
between 12:00 noon and 1:00 and then we were all gone at the same time. 
All working
guys looking for a good meal.

    But, grih-yuts were something else, Never could get a taste for 
them. My idea of a
good breakfast was sausage, scrambled eggs with plenty of bacon on the 
side, spicy
rice  and fried potatoes with sausage gravy over the top.  Corn bread on 
the side would
make the meal complete.

     But grih-yuts, no thanks. I rated grits just below some of the 
other foods on my don't
ever eat list - like artichokes, chokecherries, french fried ants and so 
on. Thanks anyhow
but I'll stick to corn made into pone any day or cornbread or hush 
puppies but grits, no,
I think I'll just skip them, thank you.

Cecil