My Personal Brushes With Gravy

My mom was a grizzled veteran of the kitchen but far from a gourmet chef. In her lifetime she turned out some of the best and worst gravy I ever tasted. I'm not just being sentimental when I say that my all-time favourite homemade dish by far was Mom's gravy-based shepherd's pie. However it seemed like the older she got, the more hit and miss her gravy became. In the late 80's I began to notice a weird, almost earthy undertone to it which was quite unpleasant. One day, simply by hanging around the kitchen I found out that, in Mom's efforts to darken her gravy (she loathed "white" gravy), she had been adding instant coffee to it. Then there was the time shortly after that when one of the "burnt drippings" in Mom's roast pork gravy that I was eating turned out to be a mid-sized bug. The dialogue went like this: Me: "Gharg! There's a bug in my gravy!". Mom: "That's not a bug!". Me: "Are you nuts? It's a bug!". Mom: "It's a little burnt piece of the drippings." Me: "With legs and a thorax?". Mom: "I don't see a head." Me: (gagging) "Blarrrggh!!!!". Mom: (to my dad) "Hammy, make him stop!".

The first Christmas after my mom died, one of my older brothers decided quite logically that we should make Christmas dinner for my dad and our families at Dad's house. I went along knowing it was the right thing to do but absolutely hating the idea anyway. Besides the obvious sadness the whole situation created for all of us, almost exactly a month earlier my marriage had hit the rocks- hard. In fact this would be the first of 5 straight horrible Christmases that I would experience in the '90's. Everyone except Dad (not yet overwhelmed by dementia but beyond hopeless in the kitchen) and my daughter (2 years old at the time) took on one of the dinner preparation responsibilities that my mom had handled for most of the previous 50+ Christmases. I remember being in charge of the stuffing and that my sister-in-law Sue took on the task of making the gravy. Everything was just about ready as she carefully whisked in water to the turkey drippings/flour mixture on the stove top. The mixture smoothed very quickly and the colouring was perfect but it simply would not thicken. Sue added more and more flour but was still left with nothing more than a roaster full of gravy-hued soup. After several minutes and the addition of about 10 times the normal amount of flour, my brother decided to taste Sue's creation. Instantly he spat into the sink and went straight for the almost-empty canister labelled 'FLOUR'. Apparently some genius had filled the damn thing with icing sugar. It took an hour or so but a Christmas miracle did occur when somehow my brother and his son found a store that was open and saved the day with 2 cans of Franco-American brand chicken gravy.

Surviving my mom's Maxwell House Instant Gravy Cappuchino, her extra protein-infused pork gravy and my sister in-law's insulin shock inducing attempt at turkey gravy did result in some nice reverse karma for me. Since those debacles occurred, I've never had even a hint of a problem banging out non-lumpy, visually appealing and delicious gravy every single time I've been called upon to make the stuff.

I'm aware that at this point there probably should be some sort of profound moral to this tale but this just isn't that kind of blog (and I'm not that bright). I do know that my two favourite nephews each have their own short yarns about gravy as a beverage but I thought I'd let them use those as delightful fodder for their own blogs.

Don't rock the boat...

...because you might get burned. The lumps in gravy can be napalm-like when they contact the skin.

Well my pretties, this is my first try at a blog. I've been almost nowhere, for long stretches I speak to pretty well no one outside of my own home and I have few interests or cool hobbies. I love my family and I like sports. I listen to music a lot but I really don't like to talk about it. For some reason I've really lost interest in movies in recent years. Long periods spent living and/or being alone have turned me into a certified talk-radio junkie and the advent of all-sports radio has only intensified my addiction. I'm really good at certain (what I feel are important) aspects of my job while being mediocre at best when it comes to the parts I don't care about. My employer for 24 of the last 25 years has never bounced a paycheque so therefore I love them. My wife of 9 years doesn't pay me but is among the kindest, most patient people on Earth so I actually mean it when I say I love her. My life has also been blessed by the presence of my 17 year-old daughter who was the only good thing to come out of my doomed first marriage. There's lots more personal stuff I could say, but: 1.)Talking about myself makes me (and probably you) sleepy and 2.) I seriously doubt that too many of those who venture aboard my magical gravy boat will be shrinks.

Thus concludes the "getting to know me " section of our journey. Next time bring along some kind of restraining device for yourself because gravy boats aren't equipped with seatbelts...