Uppie's FarmhandWe don’t call it gravy. For one thing, we’re not Italian. Secondly we’re not entirely full of shit. It’s tomato sauce. Red sauce if need be. The only people who call it gravy are a small group on provincial Italian families from the Philadelphia area that are under the delusion that this is some authentic Italian term. I’ve got news for you, yo. It’s not. Same as the whole wit or wit out, is total bullshit.
That should be a good for a few nasty comments. Next week we discuss the value of pork roll and just how vile Tastykakes are.
But back to our tomato sauce. Uppie doesn’t follow any sort of recipe and more often than not, sauce tomatoes (roma) are used to make what we affectionally call Uppie Slop, which is a kind of summer chili, a sort of mixed bag of whatever is ripe in the garden and available at the farm stand. It gets cooked down, bagged and frozen and sustains us during the long, cold winter months. It’s different all the time.
But Uppie got it into her head to make sauce, so we came home from the farm stand with a case of tomatoes and got to work. By the time I was aware of what she was doing, she was nearly done. When you can see cardboard on the bottom of the box, you know you’re nearly home.
It’s nice to know you have a big batch sauce waiting for you when you need it. Pizza sauce. Lasagna. Pasta Fra Diavolo. Stuffed shells. Whatever.
There is a song by a guy named Greg Brown called “Canned Goods.” The chorus goes like this:
Peaches on the shelf
Potatoes in the bin
Supper’s ready, everybody come on in
Taste a little of the summer,
Taste a little of the summer,
You can taste a little of the summer
My grandma’s put it all in jars.
Uppie's Farmhand
