The problem gets worse because grits don’t really work without biscuits or cornbread and country ham and red-eye gravy. That means you have to get up even earlier.

You can’t really make biscuits without doing the lard thing (ew, disgusting and time consuming, but butter just won’t work). Or if you want cornbread it’s got to be made in an iron skillet that’s never been washed, and baked in the oven. Add more time.

I figure that if you start by say 5:30 AM, you could be having an Old South breakfast by 7:00 or so. My grandmother managed this every day of her adult life. And my grandfather took the leftover biscuits or cornbread, smeared them with butter and honey, wrapped them in a cloth and took them to the fields for his morning snack.

I wish I could say that I do this every day, but I don’t (see nightowl reference above). I try to do it every week, and actually succeed about two or three times a month. The rest of the time, I’m just as uncivilized as all the lost tv watching suburbanites out there in their sterile world. My grandmother would not approve.