Category: Literature

Where the Crawdads Sing – A story of grits to polenta

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[spoiler alert: if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie stop now]

What if grits play the role of barometer for character development in the coming-of-age mystery drama novel (now a movie) Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens?

Following this suspicion, I searched the book’s index for “grits”: It shows up 52 times. This number includes the 2 times “grit” is referenced in her character. Seems poetically appropriate that Kya’s character of survival and self-preservation would reveal grit, through grits.

Let’s look at the story through the perspective of grits in 5 quotes…

“Kya was very hungry. For breakfast she’d boiled grits with soda crackers stirred in because she didn’t have any salt. One thing she already knew about life: you can’t eat grits without salt.”

Left alone at age 7 the challenge to feed herself fuels the story arc. Modifying the recipe for grits to include crackers with salt shows Kya’s resourcefulness.

“In a few days she got the hang of fixing grits, although no matter how hard she stirred, they lumped up some. The next week she bought backbones—marked with a red tag—and boiled them with grits and collard greens in a mush that tasted fine.”

Kya continues to adapt her grits recipe to become inclusive of any surplus flavor while working to smooth the texture.

“She lived on dried fish, mussels, oysters. Grits and greens.”

This menu defines Kya’s childhood between what she could gather herself and the grits she bought at the store. Her complete dependence on coastal North Carolina for food, safety, and learning makes her a creature of the marsh: the marsh girl.  

“Each morning they rose at dawn and, while Tate percolated coffee, Kya fried corn fritters in Ma’s old iron skillet—blackened and dented—or stirred grits and eggs as sunrise eased over the lagoon.”

Further along the storyline, her recipe evolves to include more ingredients and skills, as she shares her meals with Tate.

“Almost every shop had a special table displaying the books by Catherine Danielle Clark ~ Local Author ~ Award-Winning Biologist. Grits were listed on the menus as polenta in mushroom sauce and cost $6.00.”

Towards the end of the book, grits are no longer food for survival and becomes food for adoring fans and travelers to the area.

In contrast, notice the use of “grit” in the book to highlight a decisive moment of loss,

“Dug sweaty cheese from her bag. Then slumped on the floor and ate mindlessly, touching her bruised cheek. Her face, arms, and legs were cut and smeared with bloody grit. Knees scratched and throbbing. She sobbed, fighting shame, suddenly spitting the cheese out in a chunky, wet spray.”

Grit and grits, strength in the face of loss, and food for survival implicate each other in the book. Unfortunately, grits as a character barometer in the book Where the Crawdads Sing was lost in the movie.

Maybe have a bowl of grits to make up for the omission after watching the movie.

More about grits here: https://islandlifenc.com/a-guide-to-southern-grits/

Today is the first day of Hispanic Heritage, why not combine the stories of survival in a bowl?

Here is a recipe for creamy grits from one of my favorite cookbooks, Turnip Green and Tortillas: A Mexican Cook Spices up the Southern Kitchen.

1-quart heavy cream

1 cup quick grits (not instant)

¼ cup sugar

1½ teaspoons salt, plus additional as desired

Bring the cream to a boil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Watch carefully so it doesn’t boil over. While continually whisking, add the grits and cook, whisking, for 5 minutes. Add the sugar and salt and cook, whisking frequently, for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until the grits are tender. Serve hot.

The cookbook also offers a lighter version and a blue cheese version. I know adding cream to grits can be controversial.

Make grits the way you want when summoning your grit. What food would you choose to be the barometer of your evolution?

Wishing you a full bowl,

Hungryphil

Owens, Delia. Where the Crawdads Sing. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Hernandez, Eddie; Puckett, Susan. Turnip Greens & Tortillas: A Mexican Chef Spices Up the Southern Kitchen (p. 175). HMH Books. Kindle Edition.

Food Poem – In the Produce Aisle by Kirsten Dierking

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In the vivid red
of the fresh berries,
in the pebbled skin
of an emerald lime,
in the bright colors
of things made
to be transitory,
you see the same
loveliness
you find in your own
delicate flesh,
the lines fanned
around your eyes
charming like
the burnish
of plums,
your life like
all the other
fragile organics,
your soft hand
hovering over
the succulent apple,
you reach for it,
already transforming.

Kirsten Dierking, “In the Produce Aisle”  from Northern Oracle. © 2007 Kirsten Dierking published by Spout Press. From 1/5/2022 The Writer’s Almanac

Food Poem – Jack Kerouac

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“The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks don't see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you’re already
in heaven now.
That’s the story.
That’s the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they’re
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s’why I’ll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes.”

from https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1354192-the-portable-jack-kerouac

Food Poem: Breakfast by Joyce Sutphen

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My father taught me how to eat breakfast
those mornings when it was my turn to help
him milk the cows. I loved rising up from

the darkness and coming quietly down
the stairs while the others were still sleeping.
I’d take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon

from the drawer, and slip into the pantry
where he was already eating spoonfuls
of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries

from our own strawberry fields forever.
Didn’t talk much—except to mention how
good the strawberries tasted or the way

those clouds hung over the hay barn roof.
Simple—that’s how we started up the day.


Joyce Sutphen, “Breakfast” from First Words, Red Dragonfly. from the Writer’s Almanac, Monday 9/13/21

A simple start to the day with a loved one is so comforting. What is your favorite morning ritual?

Things That Cannot Die by Paige Riehl

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A spoon in a cup of tea.
Letters in yellow envelopes,
the way a hand pushed lines
into the soft paper.
Morning laughter.
A white shirt draped
over her chair.
An open window. The air.
Call of one blackbird.
Silence of another.
November. Summer.
My love for you, I say.
My love for you infinity
times a million, my son says.
Sounds of piano notes
as they rest in treetops.
The road from here to there.
Grief, that floating, lost swan.

“Things That Cannot Die” by Paige Riehl from Suspension. © Terrapin Books, 2018. From Writer’s Almanac Podcast, August 13, 2019

This is not exactly a food poem although “a spoon in a cup of tea” is referenced. It does speak to the immortal intimacy of love and loss. Small things and endless things.

May you be surrounded by things that cannot die like laughter and love,

Hungryphil

Food Poem – Death Again by Jim Harrison

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Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

Jim Harrison, “Death Again” from Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems. from the Writer’s Almanac Podcast, August 14th, 2019

Sing The Black Sheep Gospel

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The following is dedicated to all my artists, poet, philosopher, weirdo friends who like me often feel like they don’t belong. Here’s to you!

I particularly like number 5 🙂

1. Give up your vows of silence which only serve to protect the old and the stale.

2. Unwind your vigilance, soften your belly, open your jaw and speak the truth you long to hear.

3. Be the champion of your right to be here.

4. Know that it is you who must first accept your rejected qualities, adopting them with the totality of your love and commitment. Aspire to let them never feel outside of love again

5. Venerate your too-muchness with an ever-renewing vow to become increasingly weird and eccentric.

6. Send out your signals of originality with frequency and constancy, honouring whatever small trickle of response you may get until you reach a momentum.

7. Notice your helpers and not your unbelievers.

8. Remember that your offering needs no explanation. It is its own explanation. Go it alone until you are alone with others. Support each other without hesitation.

9. Become a crack in the network that undermines the great towers of establishment.

10. Make your life a wayfinding, proof that we can live outside the usual grooves.

11. Brag about your escape.

12. Send your missives into the network to be reproduced. Let your symbols be adopted and adapted and transmitted broadly into the new culture we’re building together.

Turner, Toko-pa. Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home (Kindle Locations 1106-1109). Her Own Room Press. Kindle Edition.

 

Right now, What is important to you?

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My very wise for her years niece, Farah recommended I read this book by Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air, an account of his last days as a neurosurgeon, cancer patient, husband, son, father, writer and more.  The urgent search for meaning is palpable in his words and reminds us that an awareness of death makes us also aware of life. And, more importantly, what makes life worth living for each of us. Right now, what is important to you? Getting your garage clean, cooking dinner for your family, finishing a book, knitting a sweater, holding your loved ones hands, hugging your kids, paying the bills? An awareness of inevitable and unpredictable death limits abstraction and makes our search for meaning concrete, real and EMBODIED. How can I make meaning with the body, the life, the heart beat, the energy I have today?

Here is how Paul explains the struggle of meaning constrained by time:

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air (pp. 160-161). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The terminally ill in body, intensely aware in mind show us the depth of human courage and reminds us what it means to be “fully alive.” Buddhist practices of death mediation or the yoga pose savasana (corpse pose) aim to invoke this mindful struggle for embodied, personal meaning that the terminally ill acutely suffer.

From the epilogue written by his wife, Lucy:

Relying on his own strength and the support of his family and community, Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace—not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would “overcome” or “beat” cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one. He cried on the day he was diagnosed. He cried while looking at a drawing we kept on the bathroom mirror that said, “I want to spend all the rest of my days here with you.” He cried on his last day in the operating room. He let himself be open and vulnerable, let himself be comforted. Even while terminally ill, Paul was fully alive; despite physical collapse, he remained vigorous, open, full of hope not for an unlikely cure but for days that were full of purpose and meaning.

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air (pp. 219-220). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Thank you for the recommendation, Farah.

Wishing you days full of purpose and meaning,

Hungryphil

Food Poem – Gravy by Raymond Carver

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Today’s Food Poem by Raymond Carver uses gravy to describe feelings of gratitude, the extra sauce of life. Carver is such a master of little things and moments. Maybe it’ll add to your “gravy” today. Enjoy!

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

“Gravy” by Raymond Carver from All of Us. © Knopf, 1998. From the Writer’s Almanac today, July 25th, 2017.

Image from Food Network and Alton Brown’s Best Gravy Ever Recipe

Food Poem – Carrying Water to the Field by Joyce Sutphen

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Poet Joyce Sutphen is able to conjure such vivid and intimate experiences through small everyday objects. I so enjoy her work. Hope you do too! Here is a poem about a mason jar of water from today’s Writers Almanac:

And on those hot afternoons in July,
when my father was out on the tractor
cultivating rows of corn, my mother
would send us out with a Mason jar
filled with ice and water, a dish towel
wrapped around it for insulation.

Like a rocket launched to an orbiting
planet, we would cut across the fields
in a trajectory calculated to intercept—
or, perhaps, even—surprise him
in his absorption with the row and the
turning always over earth beneath the blade.

He would look up and see us, throttle
down, stop, and step from the tractor
with the grace of a cowboy dismounting
his horse, and receive gratefully the jar
of water, ice cubes now melted into tiny
shards, drinking it down in a single gulp,
while we watched, mission accomplished.

“Carrying Water to the Field” by Joyce Sutphen.

The beautiful image that makes water drops look like glass sculpture is from:  http://www.taylourwhite.com/2012/03/18/mason-jar-and-water/

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