Remember the Little Rascals episode called “Mush & Milk” about the old guy getting his pension? And the kids will never have to eat “mush” again?
What’s mush? What were they eating?
The mush I’m familiar with is simply cornmeal cooked in water until it’s, well, mushy. My mother said she ate that a lot when she was a kid on the farm. Nowadays it’s called polenta in restaurants and considered a fancier food than plain old mush.
When I visit a friend who lives in Charlotte, he takes me to an “old time” breakfast place that includes “livermush” among its many choices (it apparently consists of liver, cornmeal, water and perhaps some other things best left to the imagination).
I tell him that, at a minimum, a better name is needed here - you’re not going to sell much livermush to Yankees.
Yep, you’ll have a hard time getting my dad to think of eating polenta as a taste treat.
When I was a kid, mush was piping hot oatmeal with milk (and raisins if we were lucky.)
I loves me some mush.
Yeah, my mother also called cooked oatmeal ‘mush’. She always took the romance out of things…
When my brother and I were little, we used to laugh at the “Good Night Mush” line from Good Night, Moon. Nobody used the word ‘mush’ in everyday parlance, though we’d heard it in stories.
Mush in my family is graham crackers in milk; you crumble up the crackers and put in just enough milk to make somewhat of a paste. Mmmm.
Polenta is just a highbrow name for the SOS so they cab charge highbrow prices.
WAG
mush Pronunciation Key (msh)
v. mushed, mush·ing, mush·es
v. intr. To travel, especially over snow with a dogsled.
v. tr. To drive (a dogsled or team of dogs).
n. A journey, especially by dogsled.
interj. Used to command a team of dogs to begin pulling or move faster.
n.1. A thick porridge or pudding of cornmeal boiled in water or milk.
2. Something thick, soft, and pulpy.
3. Informal. Mawkish sentimentality, affection, or amorousness.
For a real treat make enough cornmeal mush to fill a 9"x9" baking dish 1-1/4" deep. Cover, cool, and refrigerate overnight or even two nights. Cut into 3" squares and fry in cast iron skillet till browned on both sides, and thoroughly hot. Serve with honey or your favorite jam or jelly.
I had cornmeal mush a lot as a kid. If we were lucky, we had reconstituted Pet Condensed milk on it. It sucked. Frying it (as above) in lard or bacon drippings helped.
I’ve had plenty of polenta, always with something yummy. Polenta is not cornmeal mush. Different texture and different cooking method.
Polenta is to mush as a potato baked in the oven is to one cooked in the microwave.
Anybody wanna step outside? 
Peace,
mangeorge
I’m almost 43, and my mother always referred to cornmeal mush as polenta on the rare occasions when she made it when I was a kid. It was only served (as a main dish, not a side) when my dad (the carnivore) was not around for the meal, and I remember my godfather coming in to drop off some fresh produce from his garden at dinner time while my dad was on a business trip, and berating my mother for feeding her children mush. He’d had a steady diet of it back in the bad old days and felt that nobody who didn’t have to should eat polenta. To him only poor people ate polenta. Of course, we all liked it. It was a treat for us, along with some other foods that it was no longer necessary for middle class merkins to eat.
Anyway, if you’re serving it in a city with large ethnic Italian population calling it polenta isn’t pretencious, but maybe if you’re serving it in the deep south it is?
This is the only way I’ve ever had mush. Honey and jams are probably fine, but personally I prefer treating it like pancakes or french toast and pour on the syrup.
I also knew a yankee friend that would take left-over grits and fry them the same way.