Tomato Gravy: Southern Ambrosia (and I don't mean that orange/coconut stuff either)

See the lumpy reddish gravy at 6:00 on the plate?  That's tomato gravy, not the prettiest I've made but the first made that the camera was remembered and the process photographed.

I like to think of it as Southern Ambrosia, food of the gods.  Or something very pleasing to taste and smell.  It's a fambly favorite with or without Christmas breakfast.

Christmas breakfast?  Yep.  Breakfast.  Twenty-four years ago Thanksgiving morning in a small one bedroom apartment on Mount Moriah Boulevard in Memphis, Tennessee I awoke to smell nothing.  No thing.  It was different, not having smells of anything cooking when holiday memories previously were infused with scents of deliciousness coming from the kitchen.  Most times the smells would hurl me out of bed and to the kitchen where Mama would welcome the help, ignoring the fact the middle pecan missing from the pie was concomitant with my arrival there.   Mama would put the turkey on the top rack early in the morning when the brothers were awakened to go deer hunting, sent out the door with biscuit and link sausage.  Pecan pies would follow fowl into the oven, squash or pumpkin pies took their turn following the nuts, then casseroles and dressing.  The kitchen was rich with love of fambly, the smells coming from it a happy byproduct.

That first Thanksgiving away from home was difficult to salvage.  I was so excited to finally be out of the Deep South - away from everything I knew.  It should have been cookies (notice I didn't say cake - I can do cake).   It should have been a grand adventure.  Except there were no smells to wake up to.  There was nothing cooking in the kitchen.  It was awful.  I was homesick.  Me!  Homesick!  A vow was made that it would never happen again.  It hasn't, either.  Christmas Breakfast was created.

Every Christmas Eve I'll put a ham in the oven to slow roast the entire night.  Years ago, about the time the babies were waking up the ham would be done.  Everybody knows youngsters don't sleep past five Christmas morning.  

This year's breakfast was a little lighter than previous ones although I did find yellow grits at the Pig.

There is always (I know - no such thing as always but really there always has been) tomato gravy, one of everyone's favorite food.  To make it you'll need:

tomatoes - these are home grown, home canned Marglobe tomatoes, two pints
1/2 cup oil or bacon grease
3/4 cup flour
sugar to taste
salt to taste

See the ham to the left and grits on the back right

burner? MMmmmm...

Put the oil and flour in the skillet and turn on medium heat.

 When there's lots of bacon to be cooked

I bake it in the oven.  It turns out

nice and flat and you don't have to 

stand there and fry it.

With the heat up like this it won't take but a few moments for the flour to brown.

 

Almost there...

Yep!  I hope you've opened the tomatoes already.  If you haven't, take the dark roux off the heat or else it's going to scorch and make a bitter mess of a gravy.

Add the tomatoes and stir.  It really won't take but two or three minutes for them to thicken.

Add salt to taste and sugar to taste.   Home canned tomatoes don't require much sugar to take the acidic edge off.  GranGranny liked anything made with tomatoes to be very sweet.  My fambly enjoys it without all the sweetness.  Add as little or none at all for your family.   I have a half-cup of sugar in the photo.  I actually sweetened the coffee with a shake of it, using probably 1/4 cup in the gravy.

Here you go.  Christmas breakfast.  

 Can you tell?  I like black pepper.  I learned

a long time ago not to add pepper to the pot

or no one else will be able to eat!

Don't keep tomato gravy in reserve just for Christmas.  Our fambly also enjoys breakfast for supper where it requires little more than a pan of biscuits.  Make breakfast for your bunch tonight!

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Since Christmas breakfast was actually on Friday this year so the Oldest Fellow could eat with us, I had Youngest Fellow run to the Pig and pick up a pack of bacon for our REAL Christmas day breakfast, which I put in the oven on warm.  It baked perfectly.   I wasn't waking up on Christmas day without smelling anything - not even in my own house!

Nothing's Ever Easy at Mama's

Small tasks are never small at Mama's house nor are they ever simple tasks, leaning more towards jobs. I went out to her house to get the soaker hoses put around the tomatoes and "help" tie them up. Mama's never been one to use those tomato cages, an easy solution to flopped over tomato plants laden with the precious red fruit. Ohhh no. Mama has to stake the tomatoes and then tie them up as they grow taller and taller.

It's been hot and dry here in the Deep South of Mississippi.  This morning, though,  the humidity was still down. Might as well give the old gurl a hand, having given myself the day off from child care. Nothing is ever easy with Mama. I got to her house to find her in the den, watching the weather channel. She likes the background music she says. I think she's hoping that if she watches the scattered thunderstorms come in from the Coast that she can hope one right over her garden. I don't know...but that's where she was, watching the weather. She'd get the hoses and meet me in the garden.

Ohhh my, what a sight that garden was! Mama's two dozen heritage tomatoes had outgrown their stakes. Couldn't tie them up any higher than the top, right? OOoooo...and it's very grassy and weedy at the other end. The bitterweed, were it in a flower bed, verdant and blooming, is a beautiful sight to see. But the bitterweed wasn't in a bed. It was around the few old collard plants. By the tomatoes. Mama said she'd get it hoed up when it rains. I couldn't stand it, a tendency to a bit of OCD not allowing for the weeds to remain this morning. Where to start? I located the hoe, probably as old as I am. The blade of it has become thin from years of being sharpened. It's my favorite garden implement Mama owns. I hope she leaves it to me in her will.

It made a scritch scratch scratch sound as the dry soil was scraped more than hoed. A workable path is cleared to adequately allow the manipulation of the tomato plants. But yikes.  Mama wanted the grass and weeds thrown over the fence to the chickens. Did I forget to mention the chickens?

They love Mama. She talks to them every time she goes through the shop door to the garden. "Caaaack cack cack caaaaack," they always answer back. They recognized the sound of the hoe clearing away the unwanted forbs and knew it was theirs; Mama and her chickens treat each other well. With much cack cack caaaaacking the fowl called for their gleanings. Mama had the fence height raised between the garden and the chicken yard to keep the chickens out. Or maybe to keep them in? I'm never sure.

Trying not to get dirt and dust blown back on me the garden debris is catapulted over the fence by the hoe. The chickens, at least, were content as they busily scratched and pecked and made that funny buuwaaaaaaaauk wauk wauk wauk sound.

The tomatoes needed to be restaked. I have NO clue who put piddly little three foot stakes at each
plant but additional height was required. An excursion around the shop yielded the metal fence posts in adequate sufficiency for the task. The ground was very dry and hard, mandating the use of my SECOND favorite garden implement: the axle from an old buggy. Mama told me it was a great grandfather's buggy the axle came from and that it's always been in her family. The thing is solid cast iron, weighing probably forty pounds.  The pointed ends of it make a perfect tool to punch holes into the hardened soil to a depth deep enough the tomatoes won't blow over when a good breeze (think hurricane) comes along.

 Mama began cutting the tomato strings as I get all the tomatoes REstaked. When I was little there were always rags to be cut into long strips for tying the tomatoes to the stakes. In this day and age of plastic, however, the ruined pair of pantyhose is Mama's choice for stripping. And there's plenty of those available, Mama having anticipated needing them for the garden from her very first pair of nylons. The taller tomato stakes were set, the task of tying the plants to them yet to be done. Finally.  It had taken an entire morning of work to get to one of two tasks I went to her house to accomplish.

I love tomatoes. I like to eat them raw off the plant, in salads, sandwiches and cooked any dozen of ways, most especially tomato gravy.

I like the smell of working in the tomato plants. The soft hairy stems and leaves yield their odor and color to anything that brushes up against them.

My hands, arms, and shirt are all shaded with the green smell of tomato. I don't think there's anything more Southern in the heat of summer, well past the blooming of magnolias, than a beautiful tall tomato plant, it's freshly tied stems showing the turning triads and quartets of fruit underneath, the delicate yellow flowers promising the good of the earth to come.

The soaker hose was stretched the length of the row of tomatoes. A lone horned tomato worm was dealt with quickly and firmly underfoot. The entire garden received a spraying of sevin. All the tools but the axle are put away, it being firmly stood upright, waiting for the rain and the softening of the earth to happen so I can go back out and stake the cayenne peppers.  My octogenarian mother is pleased with the morning's work.

I get to be favorite child for a few hours.  But that's another story for another day...