On Sunday gravy.

I've been thinking about Sunday gravy lately.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google it - it's a dish with roots in Italian-American Brooklyn, rich with history and tradition.

It's also rich with meaty, tomatoey flavor.  I made my first run at gravy several years ago with my extremely Italian roommate on hand for authenticity policing.  As I am wont to do, I searched for recipes, reading through them until I could patchwork a recipe of my own, a Frankenstein of tastiness based on what ingredients I could acquire.  The result was a success, a powerhouse of rounded-out tomato flavor, its natural acidity balanced by the breakdown of sugars only time could achieve.  Meatiness from oxtails and pork ribs simmered until the meat fairly dissolved into the sauce.  Sausages cooked so low and slow they snapped apart like pillowy hot dogs, meatballs that fell apart at the touch of a fork.

Years would pass, and I would learn things.  Enough things to understand what I was doing with this dish, able to look at it through the lens of an outsider, someone who didn't have generations of traditions steering my hand.  And it occurred to me, the longer I stared at the various recipes, that this was no longer a tomato sauce, or even a tomatoey stew.

Of course, tomato is going to be the primary flavor.  Sunday gravy is traditionally thin, something that pours freely from a plate at fifteen degrees.  And yet it has an intense depth of flavor as opposed to the singular bright acidity of faster sauces, like marinara.  Tomato paste plays a part in every recipe I've seen for a very good reason - paste is derived from tomatoes that have been dehydrated, usually through roasting.  This step, this product, means that the typical flavor of the tomato is enhanced by the caramelizaton the roasting process induces, leading to a natural sweetness that can't be imitated.

But that's only half the story.  The fact is, when you're talking about Sunday gravy, you're talking about stock.  That hefty meatiness that balances out the tomatoey goodness, that silky mouth feel that sets the gravy apart from common sauce comes from gelatin.  And you get gelatin from bones.  Oxtails, short ribs, the butcher cuts and scrap meats of the day come together to create a tangible richness despite the gravy's thinness.  Of course, it goes without saying that these cuts should be browned before use.  The Maillard reaction is a vital element in any long-cooked application; the snowball principle will always apply.  Build flavors along the way, and your final result will benefit exponentially.

When you think about it, there's a reason Sunday gravy is such a standby.  Why it's revered, why it comforts and brings people together.  Scrap cuts abounded in the working-class households the dish was born in.  Tomato sauce was thinned to extend the volume and feeding power of the meal, but without sacrificing flavor.  The volume it would have to be made in to properly extract the gelatin from those bones demanded a gigantic family meal.  The abundance of glutamates in tomatoes were a natural match for the beef and pork within.  The bulk was augmented with meatballs and sausage, classic applications and extensions of ground meat.

Sunday gravy is a truly magnificent dish, one worth learning, studying, and keeping on file for a rainy day.  Even if you've got nothing to link you to it from a traditional standpoint, I highly recommend taking the time to give it a shot.  After all, traditions have to start somewhere, yeah?

(Don't worry, after all this talk of gravy, I'll be making a batch soon.  I'll toss up a 'recipe' when it's time.)

On smoking.

I started out of boredom.  I was 19, working at a liquor store, and once the shelves were stocked and the surplus stashed away in the basement, there wasn't much else to do.  The old-timers taught me Zippo and matchbook tricks.

In my early 20s, I smoked for pleasure.  Switched over to menthols to match my rolling/tripping habits.  If you have to ask why, I probably shouldn't be getting into it on the internet.  Suffice to say it worked.

When I started bartending, I smoked out of necessity.  Once the smoking ban went into effect, it was the only way to guarantee a break every hour or so.  And believe you me, when you're working FoH that hard in a shitty dive, you need to get away every now again to regain your center.

I was 28 or 29 when I finally quit.  Can't remember exactly when; it was the last January I was living in TriBeCa.  Prices were going through the roof, and, aided by a particularly nasty case of the flu, I dropped the habit cold turkey.

Only to pick it up again in full last year.  It started with a drag stolen from my employees now and again, a little something to take the edge off the crushing stress of running two locations by myself.  Drags became cigarettes, cigarettes became packs.  And before I knew it, I was back in it.

I've heard it said that you never really become an ex-smoker.  You're just a smoker who hasn't had one in a while.  See, addiction's a tricky thing.  It sneaks up on you.  You keep telling yourself you're in control, you can stop at any time, and one day you wake up and realize things aren't that simple.  It's not just your body that craves the nicotine, it's your head needing the habit, the ritual, the calm the repetitive motion, the inhaling and exhaling it entails.  You start the motions before you realize what's happening.  You make excuses for yourself.  You rationalize your behavior.  You reassure yourself you'll stop when the time is right.

You can tell me it'll kill me all you like.  I know.  I've seen it firsthand.  I know I need to stop, that this habit will stop my heart and riddle my lungs with cancer.  But it's never that easy, is it?  You know you should recycle, but sometimes you drop that plastic juice container right in the garbage.  You know you should hit the gym, but you hit the snooze button those extra three times.  And me, I take that first cup of coffee out on the porch and light up because that's how my day starts.  That's how my eyes open, how the day's timer clicks on and starts running.

So I guess I'm playing chicken with my own mortality now.  Keep your fingers crossed I bail before it's too late.

On nothing.

Seriously, guys, I've got nothing today.  I'm on day one of a six day stretch at work.  I'm in the final stages of my BiSC preparations, I'm thinking hard on a pretty serious project in the making.

I've got a character in the FFRPG I'm running trying to find a way out of the realm between the dead and the living.  I'm playing through Borderlands 2 on Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode with my faithful compatriot.  I just started watching Game of Thrones.  I'm thinking about losing weight and quitting smoking without serious steps towards either.

I'm lonely, but comfortable in the knowledge that I'm still too walled-off to be of any use to anyone else.  I'm antsy about advancing at my job because the thought of responsibility still turns my stomach.  I'm lucky as hell that I'm in the position I'm in, given the amount of effort I've put into my life.  I need to get out of the house, but it's so much easier to stay in.

I sleep too much.  I'm always tired, even though I don't really do anything.  I should floss more.  I need to start thinking about getting a new car, even if the idea of it breaks my heart.  I just spent almost $200 on a pocketwatch.  I still wish I played pool more.  I'm probably going to crumble an Oreo into vanilla ice cream later.

I'm kind of just drifting.  I have been for a while now.

On topics.

As I neared my 100th post, I was beginning to worry.  After the Scintilla Project, I was feeling pretty drained, kind of out of topics to blog about.  And yet I'd committed to blogging every day this year.

I refuse to believe that anyone has less than 365 things to talk about.  And you know what?  I'm right.  Just because things don't come immediately to mind doesn't mean you don't have something worthwhile to say.  So next time you think you're boring, you don't have anything to contribute to the conversation, take a second.  Is that really true?

Me, I've got miles to go before I sleep.

See you tomorrow, kids.

On fantasy world titles.

I've always loved when characters in fantasy settings get titles appended to their names.  You know, Strongor the Doombringer, or Dickbucket the Assfaced.  Sometimes I wonder what our lives would be like if we wore our characteristics in our names.  Pavel the Sensespeaker, Pericles the Plansmith.  Ness of the Floopage.  Laurenica the Maelstrom.  T-Bag the Balldipper.

I wonder what title I'd wind up with.  Foodwrangler?  Snarkspitter?  Couchlord?  Therein lies the trickiness.  It's not a matter of how I see myself, it's how others see me.  And that's a surprisingly difficult thing to find out.  Which again, would bring value to this whole system.

What about you?  What do you think your defining characteristics are?  And more importantly, how would you turn it into a shmancy fantasy title?

On friends and moments.

Envision a moment, if you will.

Stepping out from the chaos of a well-lit house with friends and television and cats to an empty yard, lit only with a battered laptop, a cigarette, and the barking of a neighbor's dog.

Reading the words of a treasured friend.  Separated by a hundred and some-odd miles and a couple of hours, your heart breaking with hers as you read.  Writing as you breathe in her story, knowing that you know it, reading it like it's the first time.  Was it last year?  Or the one before?

The barking falls away.  The cigarette burns out, there is nothing left but you and the empty black of the sky and the words of your friend.  And you write as you read, connected to her across space and time, sharing a moment that technically doesn't exist.

And as you stand in this impossible moment, know a peace that defies description.  Know that to attempt to share this moment means turning away from the beautiful void, means returning to the ordinary chaos of life, coloring that primal sensation with the structures we impose to make sense of it, to relate it to the rest of the world.

But the peace is enough.  That you felt it is enough.

On personal duality.

What is it about work that brings out another person?

Seriously, at work, I'm crazy about working clean.  I get annoyed at my coworkers for not scrubbing the plates before they go in the rack.  I get mad when I see a thing of chocolate sauce go into the dishwasher without a thorough rinsing because now the sanitizing liquid is all chocolatey and that's not fucking sanitary anymore is it?  How can you call the sinks clean if you're going to spend the next three hours doing dishes in it?  How are you going to just mop over that raisin some kid squished into the floor and pretend it's not there?

In the meantime, my house is a fucking wreck.  Stove's all greasy, counters are all scuddy, the floor's got cat hair and coffee grounds all over the place.  Why can't I bring that sense of order and functionality home with me?

It's like I'm two different people.  Pain in my balls, it is.