Tomato Gravy

Tags

bacon, bacon drippings, breakfast, breakfast recipe, butter, colonies, cornstarch, drippings, eggs, gravies, gravy, Mennonite-Amish, Old Order Mennonites, recipes, Roux, stewed tomatoes, sugar, Sunday Recipes, thickening, Tomato Gravy, tomatoes, V-8 juice

Over the years I have had tomato gravy many times; it is always nice to have when company comes. Tomato Gravy is very simple to make, it goes with a variety of dishes but mainly when growing up it was a morning dish served with eggs.

It is kind of like you would make for stewed tomatoes but you start with juice (now having said this about stewed tomatoes it is is also good to use this recipe for stewed tomatoes. I think the addition of bacon drippings in the gravy or stewed tomatoes adds a bit of variety to the dish.

This dish is popular in Old Order Mennonite homes especially when they have company from visiting colonies, I have had it many times in homes for Sunday breakfast.

Tomato Gravy

in a skillet take some of the drippings that you got from frying bacon (or start with saved drippings) I am attempting to create a recipe for which no recipe exists in our family like so many things we don’t have written recipes you just make it.

 

4 servings.

 

4-6 Tablespoons Bacon Drippings or butter

4-6 Tablespoons Flour (you are making a Roux)

1 quart Tomato Juice, V-8 Juice or whole tomatoes (crushed by hand)

Salt and Pepper, and sugar to taste

 

Add Flour to dripping in a skillet over medium heat, brown slightly, then add,

a quart of tomato juice, V-8 juice (ours is home canned) or quart of whole tomatoes that have been crushed by hand.

Stir into the Roux, and continue to stir, taste and add salt and pepper as desired

Add a tablespoon of sugar or so according to preference (this helps smooth the acidic nature of the tomatoes and also as we always said helps take the green taste out)

As the mixture thickens keep stirring until desired thickness is achieved, if too thick thin with a bit of water or more juice, if too thin reduce  some, or you can add a thickening of a tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in water, and stir that in.

Serve with fried eggs, boiled or poached eggs, this is also a good side dish with any meal,. or over toast or biscuits or as said before a good way to make stewed tomatoes.

Note:  In many Old Order Mennonite homes when they have over night company for Sunday Breakfast the tomato gravy is made, placed into a baking pan, a well is made at regular intervals and an egg is broken into each well, then the pan of gravy and eggs are placed into the oven and baked just until the eggs are done, this is a quick and easy way to prepare this dish for a group of hungry people.

Canning Days

Tags

Allspice, Canning, ceyenne, Cinnamon, Cloves, Pork, Savory, Seckel Pears, Spiced, tomatoes, Vegetables

Days start early during canning season, as you need to can, but also must get the chairs done in the studio also. So days begin when the alarm goes off at 4 am., this week I had a nice visit with a wonderful friend at Pharsalia Plantation in Tyro, Virginia. She wanted to learn to use a pressure canner. I don’t think she has a fear of one now.

While there we canned a couple loads of tomatoes, when I went to leave she insisted that I take several jars home with me. The are a couple of the jars. We canned in quarts and half gallons. Please take a look at Pharsalia Plantation, nestled in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Pharsalia is a plantation home surrounded by orchards and vineyards, and exsquit flower gardens. It was a real pleasure to be there canning this week with Florence Morgan “Foxie”.

That day I also came home with a box of Seckel Pears, for those of you unfamilliar with this old variety of pear they are golf ball sized or a little larger in size, the are canned unpeeled and usually either pickled of spiced. I spiced and canned my pears, as in the pictures below.

These pears are spiced in a medium to heavy syrup, with whole allspice berries, whole cloves and stick cinnamon.

It was a day to stock up for the winter with the making of pork vegetable soup, all made from items in the freezer. This soup has a savory flavor and is perfect on a cold winters day.

This soup consists of slow roasted pork Boston Butt, along with potatoes, corn, peas, lima beans, plenty of onions, celery, ceyenne, garlic, with some pinot noir wine.

Spaghetti Sauce

Tags

basil, black pepper, chuck, cookbooks, ground, jars, oregano, paste, pesto, recipes, sauce, spaghetti, thyme, tomato, tomatoes

Well today started off right about 5 am, with the beginings of spaghetti sauce, so far it is just about ready to go into the jars, when all is said and done, I should have about 30 quarts.

Like meatloaf, it is different every time you make it, for the most part I grew up cooking without recipes, you just do it. Not to say that myself, mother and grandmother did not have cookbooks, we do, and they did, of which I have a lot of theirs, the way you make your recipe is not the follow the recipe in the cookbook, oh no!!! You drag out all of the books, open them up to the recipes that you would like to make, pick out what is different between them all and then make your own recipe.

So this time, with the spaghetti sauce, we have tomatoes of course, tomatoe paste, 5lbs ground chuck, 20 cloves of garlic chopped, about 3 lbs onions, 6 green peppers chopped, a 10 oz jar of basil pesto, 1 1/2 cups Real Lemon, 2 lbs Mushrooms sliced, dry herbs, Basil, Oregano, Thyme, Black Pepper.

All this will be canned by bed time tonight (your guess is as good as mine, as to when that will be). It was late, however I now have 22 quarts and 1 pint.