It was a favorite breakfast when I was growing up in Ohio, but not an everyday offering.
First, it would be served as a hot cereal, and afterward, after hardening in bread pans, it would be fried in slices and served in melted butter and syrup.
I still remember the reaction when I was head chef (briefly) at the ashram and served it for brunch. It was vegetarian and fit into that part of our yoga practice. But half of the staff and guests were openly baffled. What is this stuff? It wasn’t anything like the buckwheat kasha they’d introduced me to. The other half, though, delighted in it.
It’s still not an everyday dish in my household, but I still relish the moments when it comes up.
My wife, of Southern roots, is more familiar with grits – a variant – and also the Italian polenta, which is much more expensive for no understandable reason.
The one place I’ve seen it on the menu is at the Bob Evans restaurants, where it’s deep fried and typically sells out early in the day.
Cornmeal does show up in my novel The Secret Side of Jaya and on many supermarket shelves, especially under the Hodgson Mill label, reflecting some distant relations of mine who went back to inserting the “g” into our surname.
So where, if at all, do you use or eat cornmeal? It was a basic foodstuff of much of early America.
Jnana's Red Barn 