I Take It Back

We woke up to a dusting of snow this morning and the cold has arrived, albeit for only a day or two, so my buddy Joetheweatherguy says. Still, I think my menu for tonight’s dinner will remain. A friend recommended I try Compari tomatoes. She said, “They aren’t as good as from the garden, but they aren’t bad for winter.” I mostly agree with her, except I’d say they aren’t nearly as good as from the garden. The plan is to make gravy and biscuits with sausage, cole slaw, and sliced tomatoes for supper. This is the food of my southern-influenced childhood, happily embraced by my Pennsylvania Dutch husband and our offspring, a meal guaranteed to be appreciated by all.

It occurred to me a few years ago that I think of most southern food as summer food. It must be because my most frequent visits to my grandparents in Tennessee and Alabama were during summer vacations, when we had meals filled with the bounty of the garden — squash and beans cooked to falling-apart tenderness, crisp pods of okra reduced to cunning little disks of fried goodness, and always, always tomatoes. I don’t remember many green salads with tomato and cucumber chunks on those southern tables; no, the cucumbers were sliced thin and bathed with sour cream or vinegar and the tomatoes were peeled (usually), sliced into rounds, and layered on their own plate. They were salted and peppered as desired by the eaters, but if the meal was gravy and biscuits, everyone smothered his portion with cafe au lait-colored milk gravy. The contrast of the cool, acidic, almost-still-alive tomato with its gelatinous seed pockets and the heavy pork-y gravy is an always-ready-to-be-recalled food memory imprinted deep within my consciousness.

Today, the tomatoes languishing on my microwave aren’t almost alive. They are pale reminders of the wonders of last summer’s Cherokee Purples and Better Boys, but when I fork a gravy-robed bite into my mouth at dinner tonight, once again I’ll hear my grandparents’ back screen door creak and slam, I’ll feel the heat of a Tennessee summer evening, and I’ll see my gone-these-many-years grandmother’s face as she surveys the clan gathered around her table.

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