Gravy

Dad liked his gravy just so. Not too thick, not too thin. On many occasions my dear mother, in her always-trying-to-please attempt at making gravy (with flour, not corn-startch) wouldn't get it right. She's make, what my father referred to, as crank-case gravy. Crank-case gravy was gravy that was so thick it poured from the gravy boat in clumps -- not lumps -- no lumps in the clumps. Or if you tried to scoop it out with a gravy spoon, it was nigh unto impossible to get it into the spoon.

I don't know why my mom never made corn-starch gravy -- it's perfect every time. No crank-case gravy when using corn-starch. But she never did.

My attempts at gravy are superb. I never get lumps, and I always make it to the thickness I'm looking for -- I use cornstarch, but it wasn't always so. After all I learned to cook from my mother who always shook up flour and water to mix it and then combined that with what meat drippings with some water added to the drippings. Good gravy most of the time, but not perfect. It wasn't until about 8 years ago when I discovered the Food Channel that I learned how to make perfect gravy every time.

Gravy could also refer to spaghetti sauce, as a distant cousin of mine insists, but we never called it (spaghetti sauce) gravy, so that doesn't count. And mom's spaghetti GRAVY was always perfect, so it doesn't need to be discussed here anyway.

I wonder if my siblings remember dad complaining about crank-case gravy.