November 26, 2009

Toast, Gravy, Love…

Posted in Family, Food tagged , , at 6:39 am by Blondie

Chipped Beef on Toast I grew up in the Inland Empire. I’ll give you a moment to get over your seething jealousy….

Most of the population of Southern California loves to hate on the I.E. You mention the 909 and immediately people think you’ve spent most of your life living in a small trailer with 30 of your closest, meth addicted relatives. The mention of the Inland Empire invokes images of a lovely larger tattooed woman wearing a white wife-beater, hot-pink bra, and booty jeans, smoking a cigarette while climbing into her baby daddy’s monster truck. Well friends, this is a myth…most of it at least.

My parents owned a track home at the foot of Mt. Baldy. They had three kids, myself included. As kids, we spent most of our time practicing soccer moves, swimming, or exploring the vacant lot behind our house. We rode bikes with Scott and Tammy from up the street, walked to the store to buy candy, and played too much Nintendo. As far as I remember, we never built a meth lab in my parent’s garage.

My parents originally decided to move to Upland to live out the suburban dream. The prospect of affordable housing, a short commute,  good school districts, and a low crime rate outweighed the fact that they were situated in the middle of no where. But at the time, none of that mattered to me. As a kid, I never knew that Upland wasn’t perfect.  As a kid, I never realized that everyone’s family wasn’t just like mine. Home was home, and that was all.

Part of home was a nightly meal together. If you were home during dinner time, you sat down with the rest of the family and ate whatever was put in front of you. There were no requests and there were no substitutions. If it was there, you ate it. Like most families, the food we ate reflected our culture. Yet our culture was less about the country we originated from, and more about the need for quick, affordable, eats that could easily feed a family of five. Mrs. Garret did not work at our house, and coming home from work to three bratty kids with 146 combined needs didn’t leave much time for whipping up gourmet meals. Thus out of necessity, creativity was born.

Unfortunately, in my family, creativity came in the form of toast and gravy. Leftover chicken? Throw it in with some gravy and eat it over toast! Lunch meat? Dice, mix with gravy, and pour over toast. Frozen veggies? Gravy, toast, of course! Now there is only so much gravy soaked toast that one girl can eat, and many nights my dinner plate was met with a groan. However, there was one gravy-inspired meal that I could never get enough of. That meal was chipped beef on toast with a poached egg.

The combination of egg yolk mixed with gravy is a taste that will enlighten even the most sophisticated palettes. More importantly, chipped beef on toast is the food of love, the food of comfort. As sure as you know you’ve ingested too much sodium, you will know that your chipped beef on toast with a poached egg came from the heart. For your cooking pleasure, on the evening before Thanksgiving, I would like to share the following family recipe:

Chipped Beef on Toast with a Poached Egg

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups warm milk
  • 2 packages of Carl Buddig beef
  • 1 pinch ground pepper
  • 1 egg, poached

Directions

  1. In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Whisk in flour all at once to form a roux. Whisk in milk, a little at a time, increase heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring, until thickened. Bring to a boil, stir in beef and pepper, heat through and serve over toast. Top with poached egg.