Southern English

[IslandTractor]

In order to make southern gravy, you have to have cooked pork sausage, bacon, fried chicken, or chicken fried steak. The drippings mixed with flour and browned to perfection are the difference between tasteless and delicious gravy. Every pan of gravy I make is a tribute to my mother who took the time to show me just how to judge the correct brown-ness of the flour in the skillet and how to add the milk all at once and stir-stir-stir until that gravy was smooth with no lumps. She taught me to listen and watch the bubbles pop just right as the key to when the gravy would be the perfect thickness on the table. Nobody likes runny gravy on bisquits.

Now, red-eye gravy is a thin gravy made with ham drippings and often served over mashed potatoes. Red-eye gravy is very tasty, but it just can't compare to the traditional brown gravy. Some restaurants serve a white gravy with fried chicken or chicken fried steak, but it just doesn't taste like the brown gravy we traditionally serve with biscuits at breakfast.

BTW: I loved my time in the US Navy up around Providence and Newport, RI. I had a ball when we tied up to the pier at the foot of 42nd street in NYC and went exploring he city all wide-eyed and experiencing so many firsts for a young sailor from the south. Boston was also one of favorite liberty ports. Of course, we never made it very far inland since we mostly tried to make it back to the ship each night. In NYC, I think we were as big an attraction to the New Yorkers as their city was to us. There was a steady line of people all the way up the pier, waiting to take a tour of the ship. We just had to close the line at the set times because we could have had people touring that ship 24 hours-a-day. They sure made us feel welcome, but with any big city, you didn't travel alone and you always had to rebuff the panhandlers.

Also, I remember my first duty station after Boot Camp was in Bainbridge, MD. My wife and I stopped in Havre de Grace, Md to get lunch. I ordered a hamburger and fries. I was immediately shocked when the waitress delivered a pattie on a bun with mayo. I thought all hamburgers came with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion and mustard. It was a shocker.:confused3: Later, I learned that if you wanted a great sandwich, you ordered a hoagie or submarine.:licking:

Hey Jinman, How about you post some detailed instructions on how to make your mother's biscuits and gravy? I'll contribute a clam chowder recipe in return.:licking:

 

[Richard Wazeter]

And we also cut the light on or off. Where is Jeff Foxworthy when we need him? He must now nearly a hundred of them.

 

[oosik]

Thanks everyone, I gawr-ron-tee I was thinking of Justin Wilson. Never knew he was a comedian also. His show was fantastic - enjoyed every minute.

 

[Bird]

I gawr-ron-tee it was Justin Wilson. He was a very funny comedian before ever having a cooking show. I listened to some of his old comedy records over and over, laughing as much the subsequent times as I did the first time. Ol' Justin's stories made me think he could have been a Cajun Mark Twain if he'd been a writer instead of a stand-up comedian.

But did you know he was also a safety consultant to some trucking companies, and he used to teach (or lecture) in the Louisiana and Texas state police academies? The first time I ever heard of him was in the early '60s on radio station WRR's late night "Library of Laughs" and I even bought a couple of his records. Quite a few years later, I met him briefly at a Northwestern University Traffic Institute seminar and again at an annual International Association of Chiefs of Police convention, where in each case he was a guest speaker (entertainer). Quite a character.

 

[smstonypoint]

Quite a few years later, I met him briefly at a Northwestern University Traffic Institute seminar and again at an annual International Association of Chiefs of Police convention, where in each case he was a guest speaker (entertainer). Quite a character.

He got around as a guest speaker (entertainer) -- I heard him speak at a meeting of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists.

Steve

 

[Daver1963]

Thanks everyone, I gawr-ron-tee I was thinking of Justin Wilson. Never knew he was a comedian also. His show was fantastic - enjoyed every minute.

One of my favorite stories from him concerned a graveyard and a drunk. It seems there was a bar across from a graveyard. The graveyard had a funeral going on the next day and the final resting place had been prepared. A feller comes out, drunk as Cooter Brown, wanders across the lane, into the graveyard, and falls in the hole flat on his back.
Being three sheets to the wind, he can't even get up, but just lays there hollering "HELP ME I'M COLD! HELP ME I'M COLD!"
Directly another feller comes out having thrown back a few himself and hears "HELP ME I'M COLD! HELP ME I'M COLD!"
Curiosity gets ahold of this cat and he ambles over looking for where this caterwauling is coming from.
He idles up to the open hole and looks down at the drunk and the drunk looks up and says "HELP ME I'M COLD!"
The new arrival looks at the first guy and says, "Of course you're cold, you done kicked all your dirt off!"

 

[PMA]

How about sweet tea? Sweet tea is not putting sweet and low or others sweetners after it's been put in the refrigerator. Go out to eat and they give you unsweetened tea with sweet and low packet and a long spoon. No way

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[Bird]

How about sweet tea? Sweet tea is not putting sweet and low or others sweetners after it's been put in the refrigerator. Go out to eat and they give you unsweetened tea with sweet and low packet and a long spoon. No way

Sent from my iPhone using TractorByNet

In many places, you're right, but also in many places around here, they ask if you want your tea sweet or unsweetened. But I've also been in some places in the east, and in Canada, where they didn't ask; just brought that old sweet tea, so I learned to ask, if they didn't, because I don't want my tea sweetened by any method, before or after brewing.

 

[smstonypoint]

How about sweet tea? Sweet tea is not putting sweet and low or others sweetners after it's been put in the refrigerator. Go out to eat and they give you unsweetened tea with sweet and low packet and a long spoon. No way

Things have gone to he** in a hand basket. You used to order tea in the South and you obtained sweet tea (sweetened with sugar), no questions asked.

Steve

 

[jinman]

Things have gone to he** in a hand basket. You used to order tea in the South and you obtained sweet tea (sweetened with sugar), no questions asked.

Steve

Gosh knows that there are all kinds of teas on the market these days: regular tea, green tea, herb tea, etc.. How many of you remember tea before it was in tea-bags? My mother used to make a teapot full with raw tea leaves added to the teapot and then boiling water poured in. Let the pot sit and steep for a few minutes and then pour the tea through a small tea strainer into a jug of water with sugar added to your taste, many times with ice cubes in the jug.

Bird, I do sweeten my tea with artificial sweeteners, but like it unsweetened if it is strong enough. What I hate is restaurants charging you $1.75 or more for a glass of tea that looks like barely colored water with very little taste.