Gravy Days
The days are growing shorter and colder, and the sky has turned gray and bleak, and it’s Thanksgiving Day, and in the fine tradition of my foremothers, I cooked fat and starch. Not for anybody, though. My family gets together between the two holidays so we can concentrate all the stress on one day. Makes it more special that way. And on that day, I make a Coke ham which nobody can screw up. But today, I am making turkey and dressing and gravy which I love and which can only be made in November and December because the rest of the year it just doesn’t taste right, but which can be easily botched, especially the gravy part. And since I am trying to eat more sensibly—not easy if you’re me—I used olive oil instead of butter and high fiber whole wheat bread instead of white in the dressing. This is the kind of thing that would get me shot if I were cooking for my family—last year I screwed up the chocolate pie and my brother bit into it and screamed (he takes his pie seriously)–but it’s just for me, so I can do this.
The truth is, the dressing needed the butter and the squooshy white bread. What I got was still dressing, and the spices and the onion and celery were still in there (where I come from, we don’t do none of that commie dressing with apples or sausage or god forbid chestnuts), but there was a definite this-is-good-for-you flavor which, as the folks at Dove and Krispy Kreme know, is not a draw. But it didn’t matter because the gravy turned out just fine, based as it is on turkey fat, and I realized that while I like dressing a lot, it’s really just a delivery system for the gravy. In fact, my Theory of Holiday Cooking can be summed up in two words: More Gravy.
I blame this, like everything else, on my family.
I come from good solid German stock (emphasis on the “solid”) and the holiday meals of my youth could be described as “starch with gravy.” Atkins would have had a stroke if he’d seen my Thanksgiving plate as a kid. South Beach would have barred us at the city limits. (Well, South Beach would have anyway. My family winters the same place they summer: Central Ohio. Our summer place is the gazebo in the back yard.) It started with turkey, of course, both white and dark, and mashed potatoes heavy with cream and butter, and dressing also glistening with butter, and thick slices of bread-so-white-you-could-go-into-a-diabetic-coma-just-looking-at-it, and when the plate was full, the adult who was setting you up to be fat your whole life would pour gravy over everything. By the time they put your meal in front of you, it was pretty much a lake of brown sauce with some lumps of protein and starch in it.
It got worse if you were sitting next to Great Aunt Clara.
I loved my Great Aunt Clara, now very unfortunately deceased. Sometimes I look around and think I may have modeled my life on hers. She was a school teacher in inner-city Cleveland back in the twenties and thirties, and in the summer she traveled all over the country by herself. She loved her job and never married, and when she retired in her fifties, she kept on traveling and lived in a succession of beautiful little houses filled with the things she’d collected, remembrances of a life well-lived. While the rest of the women in my family always looked like they were an eyelash away from taking an ax to somebody, Aunt Clara was pretty serene. The only time she became a maniac was when she got near food.
I don’t know a lot about my German heritage, but based on my family, we feel about food the way the French feel about sex: There’s no such thing as too much and you should give it to a lot of people. Aunt Clara was a master at this. If you were sitting next to her, making good headway on that lake of gravy, she’d spot the places where the china was showing through and swoop down on you with the ladle. Meals next to Aunt Clara were Sisyphean: You kept eating and eating and just when you thought you saw the end, you had to start all over again. Combine this with my grandmother’s insistence on the Clean Plate Club, and it’s a miracle any of us survived childhood.
So fast forward fifty years and I’m now a gravy junkie. I’m starting to think that maybe I should just skip the turkey and dressing and get a straw. The one thing I have given up is Gravy Bread, the fine old family recipe that consists of the afore-mentioned Heart Attack Bread covered in gravy, my favorite food as a child but you have to draw the line somewhere. Also, very few restaurants serve that. Like, none. But gravy and I will go on forever, like Celine Dion’s heart in that song. (And probably in real life; I bet she never eats gravy.) In fact, I make better gravy than my grandmother did (she’s dead, I can say that). I follow the fine old family recipe in Rick Rodgers’ Thanksgiving 101, one of the greatest books ever written, much better than Moby Dick, because the gravy is spectacular. Labor intensive, but spectacular. If you, too, have a gravy habit, by all means, get this book.
I’d write more about gravy—it’s like Proust and his madelines only not–but I have to go stir the turkey stock I have simmering on the stove. Because after you’ve carved the turkey, you have this huge carcass, and you can’t throw it out because it’s like Gravy Seed, so you sauté it with onion and celery and parsley and thyme and bay and then cover it with water and simmer it down to thicken . . .
So I have to go, but I did have one Deep Thought. You know how the male poets are always rhapsodizing over youth and springtime and mourning their lost Salad Days when the sap was rising and so were they? Well, salad leaves me cold, and I wouldn’t have those days back as a gift. I love the age I am now (although a little plastic surgery wouldn’t hurt), and I’m thinking this is about when Aunt Clara retired and hit her stride, in fact when most of the women I know are really coming into their own. So I’m thinking that maybe for women, it’s not the springtime of our lives when we shine, it’s when the days grow shorter and darker, and we turn on the lamps inside and light a fire and put the stock on to simmer against the coming cold. I think maybe women bloom in their Gravy Days. I am, anyway.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Turkey day everyone.
Love this blog!
Hear, hear. Happy T-day, and thanks for putting into words something like what I’ve been thinking all day–it’s better now that I have time to get it (and since I stopped the salad and picked up my gravy straw).
Happy, ah, friday afternoon! (No thanksgiving holiday in Oz).
Pass the gravy boat please.
Today, our healthy tossed salad remained untouched…even after the second sitting. No loss there. My second sitting consisted of a dinner roll with turkey, dressing, gravy and cranberry sauce piled on. Now, I need to get some custard pie…
Holidays, you get to eat what you want. You want the gravy and the straw, goferit. At my home we hate turkey (although we do do do love the gravy), so we had king crab claws, New York strip steaks, and mashed potatoes with cream and butter instead. I do have a very, VERY kind friend who is going to bring me some extra gravy from her T’day party, so I will get to have my gravy moment. Turkey gravy - mm-mm GOOD. Goferit, Jenny!
–Susan
Cherry Sox
Happy Turkey Day!
I won’t be getting mine until the weekend. Our hot water heater turned up its toes, and not even I am masochistic enough to try to cook turkey dinner without hot water. Not to mention that almost all the dishes are in the dishwasher, dirty, pots and pans in the sink, likewise. What timing!
Can you say Kielbasa, potatoes and canned turkey chili? LOL! Good thing we weren’t expecting a crowd.
You enjoy your gravy. If this is the only time you eat it, how bad can it be?
happy thanksgiving you guys!
What a wonderful and funny and fabulous essay on Thanksgiving . . . well, the gravy part of T-day, anyway. I especially loved the ending. These are, indeed, our gravy days!
I love your blog and have read every entry.
Amen, sister! Viva la gravy days!!
I am also German (Vob HOllen, not a agood Irish name, is it) and I also was raised on the German food ethic. It did no good to protest you were full. Omniscient adults replied, “You cant be” and gave you more…………eventualy we learned to ignore the full feeling and just eat eat eat.ahh heritage.
Camilla
Nicely honed. It’s enlightening to hear from the More Gravy school; my holiday food foundation is Pie for Breakfast.
On our family’s long after-dinner drive home, I told the story of “Pk.” My son said the p-for-o typo is so common that his online gaming group changed “ownage”–the instance of defeating, or “owning,” one’s opponent–to “pwnage.” My husband was amused by the story of talkative female paired with terse male. I could tell he was amused because he smiled.
There you were, Jenny and Bob, in the middle of a heartland Thanksgiving.
Jenny- Glad you had a great Thanksgivng. Not many other people understand the satisfaction of gravy bread.
I just turned 50 and I agree that the Gravy Days are upon us.
Maybe it’s the German in us!
My dad owned a restaurant when I was young - your typical family restaurant, heavy on the meatloaf and grilled cheese sandwiches. But my favourite thing on the menu was the mushrooms on toast, covered in gravy, and accompanied by a side of fries, also covered in gravy.
My favorite use of gravy, after its original appearance on the turkey, stuffing, and potatoes (and sopped up by the roll as a last act) is spread on the bread in turkey sandwiches.
Did you know that with a fine sense of occasion, the inventor of Stove Top Stuffing just died?
Glad you had a good Turkey Day. I spent mine with friends next door. I’m going back over later today to collect any of my pie that’s left and to beg for leftovers, using the cats for an excuse. (Like HAH! Aliera doesn’t even LIKE turkey! It’s all mine, I tell you! Mine! Mine!! MINE!!!)
I’m married to a gravy addict. One of the conditions of marriage was learning to make gravy because if it doesn’t have gravy, it isn’t a meal. Thirty-odd years later, in the name of good health, we’ve pretty much given it up EXCEPT at Thanksgiving when we have all that stuff you mentioned AND turkey gravy.
I married a thin man, which was damn near heresy to my German-Danish family. He does not get the gravy thing.
We see turkey, potatoes, and stuffing as merely the vehicle for gravy, for which songs have been written (and sung drunkenly).
We are gravy people, and I look forward to the Extra Gravy era of my life.
- Makeout Cherry
LOL–great thought about women and their gravy days! I just had a lovely dinner of leftovers where I layer the potatoes, gravy, turkey, gravy, potatoes, gravy (etc) into a bowl. I’ll go back to healthy eating all too soon, but I refuse to ruin my holiday with guilt. Or an abundance of lettuce.
The finest ingredient known to man: a stick of butter.
A (belated) Happy Thanksgiving.
We had no real gravy this year, just a sad thin gruel in a restaurant that did nothing for the otherwise fairly good food or for making our house smell fattening. Good thing we have another 4 weeks of the season to make it up!
Oh my goodness, this was so inspiring! I love to look at it that way, too. I think like fine wine, we get better with age! And there was plenty of gravy in our house this Thanksgiving. Hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Wow, I may never read Proust again without thinking about your gravy, Jen! My first Thanksgiving dinner was in Athens, OH., at a church. The folks wanted to meet with international students. We were asked to dress in our national clothes and then go to the board to point at our country in the map and tell a little about the country and ourselves. Everyone was very interesting except me; my delicate system was in shock at the ladlefuls of gravy on my plate. There was so much I couldn’t even see the turkey. And I was too polite (then) to not eat it all up. So there I was standing in front of a whole group of strangers in my “sarong kabaya” and unable to open my mouth because if I did, the gravy coagulating in my tummy promised me that nothing pretty would come out. Little did I know that THAT was my Proustian moment ;-).
Of course, that was a couple of decades ago. I’m hardy, hearty and rude now. What’s a little gravy-induced burp among strangers? Now, I like a little turkey in my gravy please–just like a little coffee in my cream. Ah, Appalachia had been good to me. Happy Thanksgiving!
I read that the average person consumes 7,000 on Thanksgiving. Give me potatoes, dressing, gravy and pie, and I’m there, baby. I’d forgotten about gravy bread, but it sure sounds good about now. I think it was my mother’s way of feeding the entire family on a tight budget. Happy Holidays!
Karen
My hubby is a gravy fiend. I make him biscuits and gravy at least twice a week. He told me he likes mine better than his mom’s (but he was probably just trying to win brownie points).
Bring on the Gravy Days. I am ready!
Oh, Thanksgiving just isn’t right without gravy. But I’ll admit, I don’t know how to make the homemade kind. I buy the kind in jars and microwave it (Do you need the electric shock paddles right about now??).
I wonder if you could make gravy in a crock pot. A thought to ponder…
Hmmmph. Atkins abhored starch and gravy, which is no more than starch, fat and water, but still died of a heart attack.
So, he died without enjoying years of delicious, not-good-for-us-foods.
I enjoyed the Thanksgiving carb-a-thon, but in the interest of pretending to do something healthy, steamed veggie baskets with zucchini, carrots and string beans. Tasty and a colorful counterpoint to all the other, more brown foods.
DH reached the saturation point today and we actually went out for Chinese this evening. Guess I’d better start freezing turkey. *g*
Atkins didn’t die of a heart attack. He died from slipping on an icy sidewalk and hitting his head. He was in a coma for a while, but never recovered.
Gravy is a food group, just like chocolate. I like turkey gravy, roast beef gravy, baked chicken gravy, cream gravy - any flavor - and gravy with stuff in it, like sausage.
I admit to being confused when Italians talk about pasta with gravy - which I figured out is the same thing I call spaghetti sauce. Took me a while though - and I got a little nauseous, and offended, thinking about pouring gravy over pasta.
Although, as a conduit for gravy, it might have possibilities. I think I’ll stick to fluffy mashed potatoes and squishy white bread.
Just curious - do you think kids who grew up with health nut parents look at stir fried tofu and a bowlful of weeds as comfort food, the way I look at chicken fried steak and cream gravy?
LOL@Stef!
Like Gennita, I come from Malaysia. Your Thanksgiving dinners just aren’t what I consider a feast.
I do love my mashed potatoes though.
Beautiful post, Jennifer!
It sounds like we may be cousins - the comment about women in the family an eyelash away from taking an ax to somebody, food - there is no such thing as too much and you should give it to a lot of people, a brother screaming when he bites into his favorite chocolate pie and it’s not up to the perfect standards he’s grown to love and require. I laughed my head off remembering living examples of all the above philosophies. The gravy thing - I get that too. I make gravy that can make people moan on first taste. It’s interesting and amusing to me. I think it’s because I grew up in the South and both grandmothers made sure I had cooking down before I was 10 because they believed the way to a man’s heart was in his stomach. Also, being the oldest in a large family, you get a lot of cooking opportunities. Cooking/baking is like therapy for me. I just love it. I also agree with you about women shining in their Gravy Days.
I am blessed with a gravy and dressing gift. I never go wrong. The turkey may be dry, but the gravy never fails.
You must have the turkey, because without the turkey, you don’t have gravy. Since you have to have the turkey anyway, you may as well add it to the Gravy Delivery System inherent in the dressing.
That’s so beautiful!
A band of autumn women
Like Ceres at the feast.
Bearing bread and gravy
And sharing sutumn’s treats.
OK, that went downhill into sentimentalville pretty fast, but I loved this blog entry!
Just visiting because I love your books and got caught up in the gravy. I absolutely love gravy - especially with potatoes (that’s the Irish in me) - must also be a midwest kind of thing as that is where I was born and my parents grew up. Gravy on meat, gravy on rice, gravy on biscuits, gravy on bread - shoot, I’d eat gravy on just about anything.
Happy Belated Turkey Day. I am definitely going to check out Rick Rodgers’ Thanksgiving 101. I am still trying to master the fine art of gravy making.
The Aunt Clara’s in our families ate all the gravy they wished and still lived long enough sit through seventy to eighty or so Thanksgiving dinnners. Now if we could just get that same work ethic down that kept them so busy… (grin) Hope your holiday was a pleasant one. And psst…love the photos under the “argh” link.
Well, I know this is heresy, but my youngest daughter won’t eat gravy… I have pleaded and cajoled every family dinner since she was old enough to sit at the table by herself, but to no avail. (sigh) However, after consulting the bathroom mirror recently, maybe it is a GOOD thing that she doesn’t like gravy–starch and calories are NOT my friends! I learned how to make gravy at my mom’s elbow–my dad was very picky, it had to be thick and brown and flavorful. I always add milk to mine with some flour or corn starch–it HAS to be creamy!!