Barefoot Memories of a Hillbilly - Breakfast for Supper

Next to taters and soup beans, the most widely served fine cuisine at our house was gravy. My Mom was an outstanding cook. I truly believe she could have cooked a pair of brogan boots and made them delicious. Times were hard, money was as scarce as hens teeth, and families had to make do with what they had. Mom was extremely good at stretching what we had, and reinventing recipes. In short, I believe she was top of the line in gravy making.

From the time she married in 1941 until her youngest child graduated high school in the 80's, she made gravy almost every morning; that's over 40 years of gravy experience, and amazingly enough, when many of us visited we requested breakfast for supper. She made plain gravy, sausage gravy, bacon gravy, chicken gravy, Bologna gravy, and egg gravy for the breakfast meals, as well as for beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and any other critter that found itself on the table. After crushing a mound of boiled taters and buttering them good, dress them up with a few spoons of milk gravy on top of them, and you have one fine rib sticking meal. I love gravy on sweet taters, fried or baked, and never left the table empty when either was served.

We each had our own favorite gravy type, mine being two-egg gravy, or possibly Bologna (buloney) gravy. I like my egg gravy with biscuits and my Bologna gravy with cornbread. During extreme hot or cold times when the hens weren't laying, and eggs were expensive to buy, in order to stretch those eggs out, Mom would stir her floor/grease (rue) mixture until a nut brown color to get out that raw flour taste. Just as it reached this point she would crack a couple eggs into the rue and stir them up quickly. After the eggs reached a soft cooked stage she’d stir in the milk and in no time we'd have us a big ole skillet of two-egg gravy. You could feed a family of nineteen-dozen with two eggs. You could substitute and dice up a couple thin slices of Bologna, lightly fried in the browned rue and still you can feed a multitude. Delicious!

When country bacon was available, she'd rinse it in warm water, shake off the moisture, dredge it in flour and fry it to a pale golden state. This chicken-fried bacon was crisp, didn't shrink which meant more portion per person. I like bacon, but I loved this old-time style fried bacon. She would also dredged fresh tenderloin and fresh ham.. How could any table not be blessed with this bounty?

Mom's gone now, and thank heavens I did learn to fix gravy almost as good under her supervision and advice, as well as bacon and bread, but it'll never taste the same. There are too many empty places at the table now, too many empty chairs. The hunger for those old days changes todays appetite.

I wear shoes now, but sometimes I have barefoot memories.