There’s something about a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast that just makes the morning better. Granted, you can’t do it every morning, but a weekend indulgence is just the time to reacquaint myself with my rural roots.

When I was a kid, the best thing in the world was to spend the night at my grandparents’ house. Of course, my grandmother never cooked in a kitchen that looked like this remodel project we completed. It was totally full of unique experiences: hunting forgotten treasure in the woods; a ride in the wagon pulled behind the tractor; sleeping on the hide-a-bed (OK, I was 6. It seemed like an adventure then – now it would break my back); but the best experience was breakfast.

You have to understand, when I was a kid, breakfast at our house was cereal and milk – every day. I mean, every day. Both of my parents worked, and my mother has always looked on cooking as a chore to be avoided whenever possible. So a weekend at my grandparents’ meant a true, rural farmhouse breakfast: biscuits, gravy, fried eggs, the works. It always made the rest of the day a little brighter to begin with such hearty fare (or maybe it was just some sort of arterial haze because of all the grease, salt, and carbs). Obviously, my grandmoteher was a bigger influence on me when it came to the kitchen than my mother was. My grandmother would never have made this dish (I grew up far enough north that grits were still foreign), but it certainly reminds me quite a bit of her breakfasts.

The nice thing about this dish is that it puts all the components of a hearty breakfast (eggs, ham, cheese, grains, and milk) in one pot. And it only takes a few minutes to pull it all together. If you want, you can certainly cut back on the butter and cream, but why? A hearty breakfast was meant to fill your stomach, not watch your waistline.

I’ll admit that this is not the most sophisticated of dishes in my repertoire, but it puts a smile on my face. I also know that a lot of people have a natural aversion to grits. If I called it polenta soufflé, I’m sure it would get much more consideration. Don’t believe me? Ask 10 people if they like polenta. Then ask the same people if they like grits. You’ll get a majority to answer yes to the former and no to the latter.

Honestly, the only real difference between grits and polenta are A) the size of the grind; and B) the color of corn used. Grits are usually made of white corn and ground more coarsely. Polenta is usually yellow corn and a finer grind. There is this whole thing about grits and hominy, but it just confuses the issue. I challenge you to make the same dish with grits and polenta and have someone be able to tell the difference.