National Coffee Ice Cream Day And Biscuits & Gravy Week - Yummy!!!!

Monday, September 6th is National Coffee Ice Cream Day so to celebrate, how about a visit to your favorite ice cream shop for a treat with your family?

Speaking of family, Biscuit and Gravy Week really tugged at my heartstrings. One of my best "growing-up" memories centers around my grandmother making me biscuits and gravy every day before I left for school. While the biscuits (made from scratch) were baking in the oven, she'd make the gravy. Funny, I can still, in my mind's eye, see her standing in front of her stove, a wooden spoon clutched in her left hand - the metal canisters and old fashioned electric percolator burbling away to the left of her and the tiny toaster oven that she used to collect all her orphaned plastic lids and stack all her meds on to the right of her.

G-ma (my nickname for her) would fry up 4 or 5 slices of thick sliced hickory smoked bacon 'til they were crisp then set them aside to cool on a pile of folded paper towels (hey - we weren't too eco-aware in the '70's). G-ma added to the hot bacon grease 1/4 cup of flour, some salt, some pepper, and a pinch of sugar then fried it. Yes, she fried the flour mixture until it had absorbed all the bacon grease and was a beautiful buttery brown color, like the color you see on the bottom of a perfectly baked biscuit.

Next she stirred in 'a little bit' of cold water to cool down the roux and get the lumps out of the flour. Her kitchen was really smelling good at this point! My taste buds always kicked in to overdrive when she'd add the Pet (and only Pet) condensed milk because I knew we were getting close to eating! G-ma would stir, stir, and stir so nothing (much) stuck to the bottom of the skillet. I remember asking her several times how much water, or salt and pepper or sugar she used but she was an eye-baller, meaning she didn't use precise measurements, and would tell me that when I started to make gravy, I'd know how much to use. Unfortunately, this was one of the rare times G-ma was wrong.

Just as soon as the gravy reached the right consistency (thick without being gelatinous), she'd lift the biscuits out of the oven. My grandmother would have me put a dish towel (the terry cloth kind to hold in the heat) on a white Correlle platter that had green swirls around the edges and then put the biscuits on the towel and cover them, tuck in the edges, and put them on the table. It was my job to set the table at this point. The whole time this breakfast dance is going on, we'd be talking about school, or how her sisters and brother were doing in West Virginia, or about her next volunteer assignment with the Book Mobile. It was just family chatter - the beautiful noise that stays with you long after everyone is gone.

G-ma would lift that huge, heavy, OLD cast iron skillet like it weighed nothing and pour that fragrant, steamy gravy into a jade green Fire King bowl (which I now have and use all the time) and plunk it down on the table. Oh, you didn't think I'd forget about that bacon, did you? G-ma would crumble the bacon strips into the gravy, she'd say the blessing, we'd eat then it was off to my junior year of high school.

I still miss you, G-ma.

Until Tomorrow....

I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time." So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. ~ Steven Wright