gravy – Bill Gibson, II

When I got over to Walmart and started to walk inside I noticed an old man carrying a bouquet of flowers, and I thought, “better late than never.” I thought this because I was actually thinking that yesterday was Valentine’s Day and that he was trying to make up for forgetting the flowers yesterday. As I was walking out of Walmart, there was a young soldier carrying out some flowers, but this time the Walmart Greeter wished him a Happy Valentine’s Day… and then it sunk in, today is Valentine’s Day, not yesterday. I said as much to her as I walked by.

Now a while later, I am eating a pear in my car, about lunchtime, having just come out of a Food Lion. In front of me, several rows ahead in the parking lot I saw a man get out of his truck. He was fiddling, but eventually, he went back to his rear door and opened it, appearing to be ready to reach in for something. But, as he opened the door, the vacuum of air pulled a bunch (about six, shiny red, heart shaped balloons) of balloons from his back seat and out, quickly above his truck. He tried to grab the string dangling down from the balloons, but they were too quick. And once they are out of reach, they are out of reach. He looked briefly, but it was obvious they were gone.

I finally thought to take a couple of pictures with my phone of his truck, and the balloons (already far away). And, here they are.

After I finished eating my pear, the man was still standing by his truck (not still looking at the escaped balloons), and so I drove over, and rolled down my window and told him, “You can tell her that I know you bought the balloons and I saw them float away.” I didn’t know him, but he smiled, and it added to the humor of the moment. *I just went online and see that six balloons aren’t that expensive. It’s not like buying red roses.

[NOTE 02/14/24]: While out today, I got a few new potatoes & small white potatoes at Pate’s Farm Market. Got a couple of cans of Cut Green Beans at Walmart and already had some bacon at home. I had made some cabbage slaw earlier and put it in the refrigerator. I included cabbage, orange bell pepper & sweet onion with some Dukes Mayo and sweetener, S&P. I pan fried a thin, bone-in, pork chop and at the end after removing the cooked pork chop from the pan, I sifted in some Wondra fine flour and added a little water (didn’t have an open box of chicken stock). Made a thick gravy. Also had a slice of White Mountain Bread. Here it is, and it was delicious.

Forgot that I also added a slice of polenta cut into quarters to the green beans, potatoes & bacon. The polenta stayed together and was reminiscent of a corn meal dumpling.

Large white lima beans and black eyed peas with ham hock or other seasoning meat are two of the classic “country cooking” sides in addition to the green beans, potatoes & bacon that might go well with the cabbage slaw. You can add potatoes to black eyed peas to extend the number of servings. Pastry goes well in the lima beans.

My “Aunt Sis” my mother’s sister, Carrie Kellum, cooked well. My mother and I lived with her for a while, and then I lived with her for a few more years, after mom moved to Portsmouth, Virginia to live with another sister, “Aunt Pete,” (Zeta Littleton) until I graduated from Swansboro High School in 1972.

Sis’ home was in Hubert and it was about an hour, each way, by school bus, to Swansboro High. So, in the afternoon it would be a few minutes past 4 pm before I made it home. All through the week, Sis would have a couple of meats cooked on the stove along with about three different sides and good homemade biscuits. I don’t recall how much sugar she put in her iced tea, but it was well over two cups full.

I would rush in from the bus, maybe getting something on a plate from the stove, and then go back to my room to watch TV. And it was Barnabas Collins, a vampire, and “Dark Shadows” that I wanted to see.

I was a fat kid most of my life, but probably during my Junior year in high school, I started drinking a bunch of lemonade without any sugar or sweetener. I had a large roundish, orange pitcher with a looping handle. The pitcher might have been an advertising gimmick from a company like Hi-C. But the lemon juice would have come from “Real Lemon.” I think Real Lemon has been around for that long. I don’t think I cut back on my eating, although I might have, but I began to lose weight. Not sure of what weight I got down to, but by the end of the weight loss, I was able to do one handed pull-ups and chin-ups on an old swing set beside the house. And, I thought of playing college football, although I hadn’t played any sport in high school. I intentionally started to “bulk up.” But, I don’t want to be physically roughed up, and I really wasn’t built to play football.

So, my love of food and riding around for entertainment both came from my Aunt Sis. Mom wasn’t a good cook, but she did fix one meal that was good and that was fried chicken. I think the meal included “store bought” dinner rolls, and whole kernel corn or garden peas from a can, maybe sliced tomatoes or corn on the cob in season. This was long before there were sweet Vidalia onions.

But after Vidalia onions became readily available, my favorite side would be some chopped sweet onion with a mess of black eyed peas & ham hock. In fact for several years I said that black eyed peas would be what I would want for my last meal before dying. And then a few years ago, I cooked some large white lima beans with seasoning meat and they were so good. But now I’m not sure of what meal I would like for my last. Not even sure if I will be able to prepare my last supper, or have the taste buds to enjoy it.

Now I use a bunch of various spices & herbs in my cooking, but growing up there were only two flavorings, Morton’s Iodized Salt, and McCormick’s Ground Black Pepper. We didn’t throw out the ground black pepper, and so the metal tin might begin to rust along the connected edges. I grind most of my pepper freshly as I cook or after the food is done. I found the Indian Pepper a year or so ago, and had to buy a special grinder because it isn’t a little round grain, but curly and hard, but the ground pepper is very pungent.

I think mom was the first, and maybe only person to fry apples for breakfast and with bacon. After they were fried, she would add some sugar and cinnamon. These were delicious! Didn’t have them often, but they were good. Now I fix a fried apple & bacon breakfast at least once a week. I now slice the apple (usually a Gala apple) in half and then use an apple corer to scoop out the hard seedy area. I then slice the halves and add them to the heated & greased pan.

I think mom cored the apple and then sliced it so that each slice was a whole apple slice, and this is what I continued to do when I was making fried apples through the years. I didn’t make them often. But some time ago, probably not more than a year, I decided that I wanted some fried apples for breakfast, and some bacon with them. Now mom only put sugar and cinnamon on her fried apples, and so did I through the years… until I started frying apples pretty regularly for breakfast. I might fry apples at least twice a week, alternating with liver pudding, a scrambled egg & polenta waffles, or egg salad, bacon & whole wheat bread, or a waffle, Cary’s Sugar Free Syrup and bacon, and finally, oatmeal with raisins or dried cranberries, Splenda sweetener.

So, once I started frying apples on a regular basis, I found that I couldn’t consistently core through the apple so that I always got the whole hard seeded part. Finally, I decided to first half the apple, from top to bottom, and then use the apple corer at a slight angle from each end to get the hard seeded part. For each half, this took two “pokes” of the corer, one from each end, and slightly heading downward to get all seeds. I then slice each half in half and then make all the necessary slices.

Once the apples are done, I don’t use sugar, but rather Splenda sweetener, and then I add all the “warm” spices: cinnamon, cloves, coriander, ginger, mace, and nutmeg. And recall it only takes about 4 minutes to cook my bacon to perfection in the microwave, saving the bacon grease for more apples or flavoring other things like pork chops, or soup.

Another meal that I enjoyed, but was probably only fixed a couple of times a year, in cold weather, was corned beef, with potatoes & onions in a broth. The broth would only be water. I think I’ve added cabbage to the mix, but it isn’t absolutely necessary. I fixed this for quite a few years, but have fallen out of love with it as much. It still has good flavor, but just not as good to me.

Mom would fix a hard corn bread, fried up in a pan (I guess.) and this might go with fried fish (Spots, Flounder) or with oysters or crabs. Of course, you could bake flounder in the oven adding onions & potatoes.

I recall mom and me going down to the Queens Creek Bridge, during the summer, and walking under it. There were large odd shaped granite stones used to shore up this area. We would have a “dip” net for catching crabs, and a bucket. Probably a 5 gallon plastic bucket for our catch of crabs. We would tie chicken necks to thick twine and throw them into the creek, and then pull the twine in slowly so as not to scare a crab, if it was on the line. You might see bubbles coming to the surface if a crab was feeding on the chicken neck.

I recall eating a “mess of” crabs one day in the little dining room at 204 Johnson Blvd. in Jacksonville, NC. There were only the two of us, mom & me, and she put newspaper down on the table top, and then a plate for each of us, with some steamed crabs on the plate. You just crack the claw shells to get to some of the meat and peel the back shell off the crab, get rid of some of the inedible guts and crack the bottom shell or pull off the little legs to get a small amount of sweet meat on the ends. Takes forever to eat crabs this way, and it is almost not worth the effort, but the meat is good. You end up with a bunch of crab shells spread around your plate on the newspaper, but this makes it easier for cleanup.

Egg salad was simple, with mayo, S&P and maybe some sweet relish. But there was only white bread. Merita. A BLT was of course on white bread, with bacon, sliced tomato, mayo and Ice Berg Lettuce. I don’t recall their being flavorless tomatoes when I was growing up. Today, there are few good flavored large tomatoes. I am guessing that making a tomato that looks good and transports well without rotting has taken precedents over a flavorful tomato.

Recently I have made pretty good gravy from hamburger, steak and pork chops. I pour out most of the grease from the meat I have cooked (in a pan on the stove-top), turn down the heat, and then sift in some Wondra fine flour. I scrape the bottom of the pan and remember TV chefs saying to make sure the flour is cooked long enough to lose it’s raw flour flavor. I then add some Chicken Stock and try to make a thick gravy. I may add some marjoram and/or thyme, and if the gravy is bland, some salt. Seems like the pork chops make the best gravy.

My cousin, Mary Ann, has always been a good cook, and she does make good gravy. One of her secrets to flavorful gravy was using some Morton’s Nature’s Seasons. I think she also used Morton’s Season All but I don’t recognize the current packaging for it. *But, one Thanksgiving it wasn’t the gravy but the mashed potatoes that she made that we both still remember to this day. She mashed them, and added some butter & cream, and mashed them some more, and some more butter & cream and blended them. At the end they were so silky smooth and flavorful that we had extra helpings and its something we mention on the holidays and agree those mashed potatoes were exceptionally good that year.

I heat up a slice of wheat bread (to soften it) in the microwave (about 10 seconds usually does it).

I did make a slice of garlic bread the other day, slathering margarine on it first and then sifting a generous amount of garlic powder on top, and then toasting it in the oven. I don’t recall what I ate the garlic bread with, but I do recall that it was delicious and worth the extra effort. *Without looking back at what I’ve eaten recently, I know that I would have enjoyed garlic bread with spaghetti, but I haven’t had spaghetti in quite a while.

For years, I made my homemade spaghetti sauce by starting with the $1 can of starter sauce (Delmonte or Hunts). For a while I would add a small can of mushroom bits, and some ground beef. At some point, I had some Italian sausage, and read somewhere that fennel seeds were a flavoring spice, so I started adding fennel seeds to my sauce, even if I didn’t have Italian sausage. Once I used ground beef, pork and lamb. The ground lamb was expensive. The end result was a little more flavorful, but I decided it wasn’t worth the extra money and effort so I went back to just ground beef. I do add oregano, thyme, bay leaf, S&P.

But about two years ago, I saw a chef on TV using Rao’s sauce as a starter, and not too long after that I bought a jar of Rao’s in Walmart. The jar of Rao’s was about $8. When it came time to use it, I only used half a jar, but the end result was definitely worth the extra price. I’m not sure what I like about Rao’s (and they do have an assortment of sauces) but the extra cost was worth it.

The Sesmark Savory Rice Thins Crackers go good with the Bucheron Goat Cheese and the Nueske’s Smoked Liver Pate. I like them with my Greek Salad also. They are crispy and flavorful, and they stay crisp even when wet.