My Grandmother’s Bacon Gravy

I had two lovely grandmothers. Some kids only get one good grandmother and one grandmother who has had it with you, young lady. I was lucky enough to get two really good ones.

My grandmother, Aileen, was a homemaker, and boy was she good at it. She sewed beautiful clothes, crocheted afghans out of exotic yarn (meaning she sometimes used PURPLE), and cooked the most delicious food you’ve ever had in your life. She absolutely bustled with creativity and talent.

Time at her house was an education. She cut patterns out of her leftover material scraps for me to hand sew clothes for my Barbies. She taught me to thread a needle and tricks for making my stitches straight and all the same size. While my Barbies often sported unusual haircuts (ahem) they were dressed like a million bucks. She would sit me at her kitchen counter with cookies and pots of different colors of icing and tell me stories or sing me songs while I tried to make each one a masterpiece. I can still remember all the words to Ruben,Ruben I’ve been thinking. That was one of her favorites.

Yesterday, Easter morning, I made bacon gravy for my family and friends exactly how she taught me to make it more than forty years ago: Fry up a pound of bacon in a large cast iron skillet and then set it aside on a paper towel lined plate. Put enough flour in the skillet to soak up the bacon grease (you have to eyeball that part). Then pour a tumbler of milk into the skillet “stirring like the dickens” with a fork until it thickens enough. Then you crumble the bacon back in and voilaBacon Gravy.

I never make bacon gravy that I’m not standing in Grandma Aileen’s coffee-and-biscuit scented kitchen, stirring like the dickens at her direction knowing that this gravy is going to be really good. And since she was a writer who wrote something every day of her life, whether it was a recipe, cards for friends' birthdays, a letter to her pen pal of fifty years, or something in her journals, she taught me that too.