My mother used to serve my sister and me plates of bread and gravy with the huge enthusiasm of Tom Sawyer inducing suckers to paint the fence. "We're having such a treat tonight!" she would gush, and we believed it.
In truth, this was probably the cheapest meal she could think of to put on the table during some dark days when my dad was out of work. I suppose there had to have been a little meat in the house at a previous point, else where would the gravy have come from, but it didn't appear on our plates, nor did we care.
Many decades after I figured it out, I still love bread and gravy. Stuff from the bottom of the pot roast pan, like today, is great. Leftover gravy from Thanksgiving dinner is even better. If there's some meat on the plate too that's fine, but hardly necessary for me to feel comforted.
For me, the bread must be whole wheat, and the gravy should be simple unthickened juice. How I missed it as a child when my mother and I were found to be allergic to yeast (as well as a ton of other things.) It has never tasted quite as good now that I can eat it again.
ReplyDeleteMary Anne in Kentucky
I have always loved chipped beef on toast....and another similar fare, chipped ham with mustard or cheese sauce on toast. I suspect that it too was out of frugality...but I thought it was scrumptious. Another frugal meal at the end of the month was having pancakes for dinner....I thought it was a treat...but I suspect that it too came from necessity. God bless our mothers for being able to make do and not show it!
ReplyDeleteI grew up eating gravy bread. My mom is a midwestern German farmgirl who grew up during the great depression. She said she grew up eating some sort of "slop bread" and that our gravy bread was a delicacy compared to that. It was good ol fashioned gravy made from pork drippings and she served it over white Bunny Bread. I loved it. I got to cut the bunny off of the Bunny Bread bags and paste them into little art projects.
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