Hi, I am JennyMac and I'm a Southern Girl

Despite my love for ethnic foods, every so often I gotta have some of the southern foods I ate when I was younger.


I had very eclectic food influences in my life. My mom grew up eating Polish foods and we ate peirogies, stuffed cabbage, kielbasa, etc mostly during the holidays. During the week it was traditional fare that the typical American family was eating ...burgers, hotdogs, pizza, spaghetti (ironically not American of origin! LOL) Yet my Dad liked having a traditional southern breakfast many weekends. Although we were NOT the traditional southern food eating family of the greens, fried chicken, stewed tomatoes, and/or biscuits and sausage gravy; breakfast always remained the same. Fried Eggs, scrapple, fried tomatoes, grits and maybe biscuits (only if we managed to take a batch home from Me-mom, my Dad's mother).


Now in my making breakfast for K-man, he has not taking a liking to grits *sniff-sniff*. He ate hominy growing up where I did not. So if I want grits for breakfast. I make them only for me, K-man will pass.

Since our tomatoes are in abundance right now and I have the free time for a fun lunch right now...I thought...JennyMac is going to prepare a southern brunch for herself!

Typically my Me-mom and Dad would only dredge the tomatoes in flour/salt and pepper and that was it. They were okay that way but they were soggy, wet and never developed any crunch probably because the flour only dissolved in the oil and burned. Since I am college trained in food preparation...I know the proper way to fry my tomatoes to get a CRUNCH. Sorry Dad....

Fried Tomatoes and Grits

Old Fashioned Hominy Grits
Tomatoes
salt and pepper
cornmeal
flour
1 egg
hot sauce
oil for frying

Prepare your grits according to the package. One serving was 1 cup of water to 1/4 c. hominy grits (I use milk to make them more creamy) Cook for about 15 minutes on simmer. Stirring on occasion. While grits are cooking, let's prepare the fried tomatoes.

Slice your tomatoes. Sprinkle them with a little salt and let them rest on a paper towel. While you prepare the coating stations.



About 3 Tbsp. of flour on a plate. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well with a fork.









Crack egg in a small bowl and some hot sauce to taste and beat well.










About 1/3 cup of cornmeal, salt and pepper and cayenne sprinkled. Mix well with a fork.






Flour tomato, patting gently, drop into egg...flip it several time for the egg will not want to stick at first. Keep flipping until you see the flour start to get gummy. Then put into cornmeal and flip and press lightly Keep turning until you feel it's a coated well. Set all the coated tomatoes aside on a plate while you heat up some oil in a pan. Just about 1/4 inch of oil in the pan will do. Medium heat. Cook on each side about 1-2 minutes or until lightly browned. Drain on paper towel while you get your plate ready.

Plate your grits. I like them with a little butter and pepper. (BTW, in the picture: under the fried tomatoes was the leftover egg mixture that I cooked up like scrambled eggs -no point in wasting them) Lay your fried tomatoes on your grits.

Crunchy toasted corn outside, soft and sweet inside. The creamy grits with a bite of the fried tomato added another experience to the textures. Oh so goooooooooodd.

Today was a nice day with no humidity and a slight breeze. I took these out on the deck with some lemonade to each for lunch. All I needed was a hoop skirt and a parasol and I would be set!

Enjoy!