The challenge: to cook all 115 Thug Kitchen recipes within 365 days. We are now 89 recipes down with 26 recipes to go. There are only 40 days left.

Yes I still only have one functioning arm. Yes it’s still frustrating.

It’s amazing how much you do with your right hand, when you’re right-handed. The last few days I’ve been walking around with my hair in disarray, no make-up on, and with deodorant under only one arm. But fuck it, this is a somewhat easy breakfast to make.

This is Maple Berry Grits.

First of all, I searched high and low and couldn’t get hold of grits. So I asked the Thugs and they said I could substitute with polenta (via a Tweet).

I grabbed a saucepan from the cupboard, clumsily knocking over several other saucepans on the way. I managed to slosh the water and rice milk into the saucepan and eventually brought it to a boil. I whisked in the polenta ‘grits’, trying not to just dump them in, like the Thugs had warned. But as soon as I had mixed in the polenta, the whole thing turned into a goopy paste. Goopy paste is fucking hard to stir with just one arm if you don’t want to throw the whole saucepan on the floor at the same tome. It actually already seemed to have the consistency of the end result, but I just wasn’t sure. So rather than leaving it to simmer for 20 minutes, I turned off the heat and left it covered while I chopped some berries.

Warning: washing and slicing berries with your left hand is extremely difficult (obviously, unless you’re left-handed).

I don’t know whether it was because it was polenta and not grits that it seemed ready right away, but because I was paranoid and had never had grits before I left it for 20 minutes anyway while I got ready and drank my coffee. My kid had already had his first breakfast by now. So this was round two for him and he was very intrigued, especially by the berries.

A hearty warm breakfast to set you up for the day. The berries and the maple syrup really made it. I’ll definitely make it again once my arm is back to normal. Maybe this time I won’t knock over all the saucepans, while I’m flailing around single-handedly.