As the Gravy Flows

 

As the Gravy Flows

Viscosity is always a consideration, as is definition:
traditionally a sauce composed of meat juices and
thickeners, or, a sediment of melted tallow, which
somehow brings to mind a laborer rising early after
a hard night, eating red-eye, made of fried ham
drippings and coffee, served over grits. Or perhaps
an egg gravy – a béchamel sauce flavored by bacon,
with water and milk, and an egg – ladled over butter-
rubbed biscuits. But then I picture my vegetarian
friends pushing away from plates of this fine repast,
and not wishing to deny them or those following a vegan
lifestyle, we turn to roasted vegetables with broth, oils
and wine and a savory yeast extract. But I can’t fathom
a life without giblet gravy, which features the neck and
offal of fowl, including the liver, the taste of which may
be too strong for other recipes using giblets, an interesting
word in itself, from the Old French for a game-bird stew,
and the Middle English meaning of an inessential
appendage, or entrails, morphing to garbage. I would
never throw out an onion gravy, essentially a thick sauce
of slow-cooked onion and stock or wine, and admit to
having tasted a cream version with the consistency and
flavor of diluted paste, indicating a lack of balance in
flavor and poor roux-making technique. My favorite
would be an Italian-American buddy’s gravy, his word
for a rich ragù of sausage, braised beef and shredded
pork, red wine, tomatoes and herbs, served over pasta.
This of course stretches the definition of the word, but
language is elastic, is it not? So it flows, as does the gravy.

 

“As the Gravy Flows” was drafted during the August 2016 30/30 Challenge. Thank you to Lady Phoenix for sponsoring the poem and providing the title!

 

20 thoughts on “As the Gravy Flows

  1. Delightful read with morning coffee (as yet no food intake) – I shall weigh options in choosing the day’s gravy.
    I note the absence of the standard “cream gravy” that tops chicken-friend steak (and whatever else is on the plate) – growing up in Texas, the only gravy I recognized. (Maybe your “diluted paste” alludes to the Texas standard? But where I indulge, cream gravy is nicely spiced! Note that I never make this at home – not exactly a healthy choice.)

    Liked by 1 person

  2. For you gravy-lovers out there, you should visit the North of England. I was working there a few years ago and in the drinks machine, they had tea, coffee .. and GRAVY!

    Its a thinned down version for drinking but tastes just the same!

    Liked by 2 people

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