Shrimp & Grits

Shrimp & Grits, 2010

At our daughter’s wedding last spring, guests were given gift bags containing the dry ingredients and a recipe for making shrimp and grits, one of the Low Country dishes served at the wedding dinner.

During the months leading up to the wedding, our daughter found a shop near the Garment District in New York that sells nothing but buttons. She and one of her friends spent a couple of Sunday afternoons covering the buttons with fabric and then shipped the lot of them down to Savannah to be fastened with the recipes onto the individual bags of grits and spices. Very few of the newlyweds’ friends are Southerners. So they had fun taking home a taste of a regional cuisine they don’t see much.

My wife finally got around to making our shrimp and grits the other night. She’s a wonderful cook and also one of those people blessed with the ability to remember the taste of just about every good meal she’s ever had. I, on the other hand, can remember the taste of about three meals in my lifetime. It’s not like I don’t have taste buds. Smells can immediately take me back to places in my childhood. But I just don’t have a good sensory memory for taste.

I have to admit, though, that having shrimp and grits the other night took me immediately back to that beautiful and most happy of days in Savannah last spring.

Update: The recipe for "General Oglethorpe's Shrimp & Grits" can be found here.