Grits

It is often in the attention accorded the lowliest of ingredients that a chef's truest love can be discerned, and at Marigold Kitchen you cannot help but notice the ritual surrounding the grits - coarse yellow, ground by stone, from historic Byrd Mill. In the end - after hours of low-simmering and whisking (every 10 minutes, dictated by the buzz of a timer!), chilling, and hard-beating over the space of two days - they are transcendent things, buttery and risottolike in their classic pairing with shrimp, an altogether different species from what you'd expect.

A humorist once noted that the three basic food groups for Southerners are sugar, lard and bourbon. A simplistic statement, of course, and an incomplete one. There are actually four food groups, and the most important one, the one no self-respecting Southerner would turn down, is grits. People from Away (anywhere north, east or west of the South) don't always understand the attraction to the bland, mushy, white mound of cereal that justly could be called the national food of the South.

What's going to be the warmest memory of Campaign '88? Issues? Nah. It'll be the popular nicknames given to each presidential ticket. Who can forget the catchy label for the Carter-Mondale duo of '76? "Fritz and Grits. " This year's odd coupling of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Sen. Lloyd Bentsen on the Democratic ticket deserves an equally classic nickname. Here's the best possibility: Bentsen & Hedges. Dukakis hedged his bet by choosing Bentsen, a Texas millionaire on the party's conservative side.

The first time I encountered them, I confess I was truly perplexed. There on my breakfast plate, next to the eggs and bacon, where the hash browns should have been, was a pile of steaming white mush. "Grits," explained the waitress, with a touch of condescension in her voice, as though the identity of this strange breakfast food should be obvious to any red-blooded American. Grits are dried, hulled, coarsely ground white corn kernels. The corn is treated with wood ash to facilitate hulling, a trick discovered by American Indians.

It was a potentially explosive question. But "Humble" Bob Shoudt of Royersford, a.k.a. "The Notorious B.O.B.," delicately deflected it. After winning three world eating titles this month - for gobbling grits, burritos and chili spaghetti - what, uh, gave him the most gas? "Shell gas station," he said this morning. ". . . I had to drive 3-1/2 hours to get to the grits contest. So I did go through a lot of gas. " On Saturday, 42-year-old pro eater/information technology manager polished off 18.98 pounds of grits in 10 minutes in Louisiana.

Friday's lunch menu at the cafeteria of a big auto plant in Normal, Ill., offered meatloaf and egg rolls. It wasn't expected to cause a stampede by gourmets. But it was politically correct and sensitive. You never know where political correctness and sensitivity will rear its stern head. It's something new almost every day. This is how it came to the company cafeteria of the Diamond-Star Motors Corp. Some time ago, an executive asked the firm that operates the cafeteria to broaden the menu, offer more choices, provide some variety.

The four-bedroom sits on a quiet street in a sleepy subdivision off a four-lane road in Chester County. Inside, the den furniture is pushed out of the way. Cardboard covers the floors, piles of snacks sit on card tables next to clothing racks in the foyer, two people are chopping vegetables in the garage, and two guys with video cameras growing out of their foreheads are stalking a large, bald man carrying a plate of tandoori chicken from the...

Dear Polly: Do you have a formula for a homemade solution that you can dip silver into for the purpose of removing tarnish without heavy rubbing? - Maggie Dear Maggie: You may be thinking of this method of silver cleaning, which depends on a chemical reaction to remove the tarnish. It's quick and easy, but it can leave silver looking dull and lifeless, so don't use it too frequently. Place the silver on a sheet of aluminum foil in an enameled pan. Cover with 2 quarts boiling water and 4 teaspoons baking soda.

Fusion groove As we rev up for Philly Beer Week in early June, it's also worth casting a glance toward one of the best beer lists in South Jersey, at Cork. This Westmont survivor has grown a serious brew list in recent years, with 20-plus bottles and 15 taps ranging from Chimay "Cinq Cent" to Germany's Weihenstephan pilsner. But Cork's kitchen, headed by chef Sae An, has also made serious strides since its initial lukewarm review five years ago. Aside from lowering entree prices into the neighborhood-friendly teens, An has found his fusion groove with Korean-themed tacos, Asian-flavored short ribs over jalapeno-cheddar grits, and my favorite - this crispy flatbread topped with the Chinatown fixins for Peking duck, with crispy skin and savory meat strewn amid crunchy green scallions over a grilled pizza dough smeared with hoisin.

A GRITTY PROBLEM It's a problem you've probably all wrestled with - what kind of wine to serve with grits. Well, worry not - Atlanta Cooks for Company, a high-toned Southern cookbook, recommends that you uncork a Chardonnay to complement grits dishes. HOW SWEET IT IS Sweet tooths take note: NutraSweet Co. says it has developed an artificial substance 10,000 times sweeter than sugar. But the company doesn't expect to seek Food and Drug Administration approval of Sweetener 2000 before 1994.

As they pushed their way to the top seed in the NBA's Eastern Conference for the second season in a row, the Chicago Bulls did so in great part by winning the "hustle plays" and showing a willingness to do what their opposition would not. But, as they stand at the brink of elimination following an 89-82 loss to the Sixers Sunday at the Wells Fargo Center, it is the Bulls who are seeing the grit of the 76ers. "They are a tough team," said Bulls reserve power forward Taj Gibson.

ST. LOUIS - Like the spinning numbers on a slot machine, the pitch count for Cole Hamels was adding up quickly in Tuesday's Game 3 of the National League division series at Busch Stadium. More important from the Phillies' perspective, the Cardinals' hit count and run count weren't. Hamels' job was to prevent the Phillies from facing a Wednesday elimination game in a postseason that's supposed to fill up most of the days in October. The 27-year-old lefthander did his job well, if not efficiently.

SOME GOOD movies in the bin this week, starting with the Coen brothers' Oscar-nominated "True Grit. " It's their more grounded-in-reality take on the iconic John Wayne classic, with Jeff Bridges as the U.S. marshal who helps a girl (Hailee Steinfeld) find the man (Josh Brolin) who killed her father. Superb support from Matt Damon, though I fear this movie will suffer in a small-screen downsizing. There's a featurette on "True Grit" novelist Charles Portis - it's a great book, well worth a read.

The top DVD choices this week include the remake of a western classic and a long list of TV shows. True Grit, Grade A: Sibling directors Ethan and Joel Coen combine the grandeur of a traditional western with their quirky sensibility. It takes an actor of Jeff Bridges' caliber to step into the big boots of Rooster Cogburn, a role that earned John Wayne his only Oscar. With strong supporting performances from Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon, the film is one of the best of the West to come moseying along in years.

DEAR ABBY: I work in a dental office. My boss (the doctor) and his assistant have a problem keeping their pants up. Every time either of them reaches for something or, God forbid, bends over - they flash their backsides. It's just bad, and both of them are pretty good-sized men. My boss is the kindest, most generous person I know. But frankly, this is an embarrassment for patients and co-workers alike. Something has to be done. Any suggestions to help us with this problem would be greatly appreciated.

STRANGE-BUT-TRUE Jeff Bridges fact: His last two movies, "Tron: Legacy" and "True Grit," each made almost exactly the same amount of money, $171 million. They were, however, of differing quality. "Tron: Legacy" is a wacky sequel to the ahead-of-its-time 1982 animation/effects movie (the DVD extras include an informative look back at the original), slicker and better-looking, but strapped with a story that managed to be incomprehensible and predictable at the same time. Bridges, though, had fun as the digitized hippie locked in a virtual world of his own design, visited by his son (Garrett Hedlund)

It isn't the flashiest of All-South Jersey girls' basketball teams, but it might be one of the toughest. This year's Inquirer first team features as much solid defense and rebounding as it does scoring. Leading the first team is Timber Creek senior Jasmine Martin. Martin, The Inquirer's South Jersey Player of the Year, was the most complete player in the area this season. She averaged 11.8 rebounds to go with her 26.4 points per game. Rancocas Valley junior guard Natalya Lee embodied the grit and hustle that carried RV to the program's first state championship.

Mattie Ross, the 14-year-old played by Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit , is a self-composed Arkansan who kept the books for her father's ranch until her father was shot and killed. The time is the 1870s, the West is wild, and Mattie - determined to avenge her father's death and bring the perpetrator to justice, if not to his demise - speaks with a flinty eloquence that shows uncanny intelligence and resolve. In Joel and Ethan Coen's rousing adaptation of the Charles Portis novel - their True Grit opened Wednesday - Mattie drops words like braggadocio with aplomb.

A version of this review appeared Wednesday. Are the Coen Brothers going biblical on us? Although True Grit , Joel and Ethan Coen's artfully wrought and agreeably wry western, is based on Charles Portis' 1968 novel, the film's quotations from the Old Testament, literal and metaphoric, are everywhere. Some of these references, too, hail from Portis' book, but after tackling the trials of Job in A Serious Man , the moviemaking siblings appear to have taken an especially keen interest in the venerable Christian and Hebrew texts.

THE COEN BROTHERS' "No Country For Old Men" told of a Texas sheriff who, confronted with the worst criminal he'd ever seen, spit the bit. He would, he figured, have to corrupt himself to stop the killer. It's "what you're willing to become," he tells us. "A man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I won't do that. " Now the Coens have made another western, from the Charles Portis novel "True Grit," and it's a fair to say there's a new sheriff in town. He's the legendary Rooster Cogburn, happy to take on a half dozen evil men by putting the reins in his mouth and riding out with a gun in each hand.