"You've been holding out on me for five years," my husband Dwayne said to me on
Sunday night as he tucked into his roast beef and potatoes. They were
both smothered in thick, dark brown gravy.
My daddy's gravy.
I
honestly never thought I made good gravy - it was always lumpy and thin
- so I never bothered. Just as I learned to live without cheese sauce on broccoli (I still remember those rare, special nights as a kid when Mum had bothered to make cheese sauce), I learned to live without gravy. As hosts of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, we have clearly delineated roles: I'm vegetables and dessert, and my husband is meat and gravy. If he wants it, and as a proper Nova Scotia country boy, he does, he has to make it.
Then on Saturday, the trick to making good gravy was revealed to me.
After crock-potting a roast for
my father-in-law because his wife was ill, I needed gravy but Dwayne was
busy. My mother graciously agreed to make it and I watched as she dissolved
the corn starch in water BEFORE adding it to the roast juice simmering
in a pot.
So when it came to serving our pot roast on Sunday, I
was able to put a boat of my own gravy on the table for the first time. Thick, dark brown gravy that contained absolutely no mushroom soup.
And now my husband is a convert to Ontario gravy.
....and so is his father...
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