As the old saying goes, “You can’t swing a dead cat without
hitting______.” You usually fill in the
blank with something overly abundant.
In this case that dead cat would hit somebody making chicken
and waffles, or shrimp and grits.
My sainted wife very much enjoys watching food and cooking
shows, some of which involve competitions.
Cooks and chefs make signature dishes or family favorites in order to
please judges.
It seems as though invariably, someone on each of these
programs prepares one of those two dishes, and sometimes both.
I love good fried chicken, and my sainted wife makes some of
the best. I also enjoy a good waffle
whose little waffle wells catch the syrup and melted butter preventing runoff.
But putting both together seems a bit messy if not
altogether sacrilegious.
Chicken prepared for this dish contains bones thereby
requiring the use of fingers to eat, while the waffles require at least a fork
to get those sweet, sticky morsels to your mouth. As a meal you are looking at a sloppy train
wreck, at best.
On the other hand, shrimp and grits seem somewhat benign in
comparison. You have another southern
staple consisting of gruel, I mean grits, and shrimp.
To the best of my knowledge, the only people who don’t eat shrimp
are those with seafood allergies and folks who are too poor to buy them.
In any case, my sainted wife fancies herself as a grit
connoisseur, if there is such a creature.
As the stories go, she was reared on grits and butter.
For any reader who has never had grits, they are akin to
eating wet sand, much as you would find on the edge of the ocean – right where
the waves lap up onto the beach.
Now all this sounded too much like punishment, similar to
waterboarding. Evidently, not to
Southerners.
Very much like mixing chicken and waffles, and ammonia and
bleach, shrimp and grits falls short of the promise of something touted as
special.
Unfortunately, we attempted to replicate the shrimp and
grits thing. The shrimp was tasty, the
grits were gritty. I expected more but,
that’s because I still believe in unicorns.
Now every time we see someone attempting to woo judges on
any of those cooking shows, we grunt an “Ugghh!” in unison as a commentary and
reaction to our flashback of our attempt.
And feeble it was.
Reinventing the wheel is fine if you can improve on
something however, if you do something just to make it different, do us all a
favor and don’t.
