A (corn) mushy post

"Polentone" ("pulentun" or "pulintù" in dialect) meaning "polenta eater" (literally "big polenta") is a derogatory term sometimes used by Southern Italians to refer to Northern Italians.

I am a huge fan of whole grains – and I’ve never met one I didn’t like. Prior to joining Weight Watchers in 2006, I don’t think I ever ate ANY, other than the occasional brown rice or maybe barley - if it was in soup. No wonder I got so fat. White flour. Ugh.

One of the most overlooked of the whole grains is polenta. It tastes so good it’s hard to believe it’s good for you. Well, unless you don’t like corn. Then it might not be so great.

Polenta is basically corn meal. Or corn mush, but that doesn’t really sound very appealing, so we’ll stick with corn meal. You can find it in the flour aisle of the grocery store where it’s available in either white or yellow. I don’t think there’s a difference; if I’m wrong, let me know. It looks like this:



Or, if you’re lucky enough to have a more progressive store near you, you can find it pre-made and ready to slice in a tube, like sausage:

And, out of the wrapper:

And holy cow – if you ever want to get a craving for all things polenta, do a Google image search. There’s some good-looking stuff out there! Like this one that made me wish I had a personal chef:

One of the nice things about polenta is that it can be used in both sweet or savory applications. I tend to eat it fried and topped with sugar-free maple syrup. Like a pancake. But you can also eat it with eggs, with spaghetti sauce, as a base for nachos and in lasagna, in place of the noodles!

Because I only have crappy stores in my immediate vicinity, I have never been able to use the pre-made polenta and have to resort to making it myself. Which is why I don’t eat it as often as I would like. (Lazy.)

Over on my Wiki, I have a ton of polenta recipes. I also have a lot of non-recipe uses for polenta that you can look at if you need to get an idea or two.

But try it. It’s delicious.