Growing up in beautiful, crime-free Iuka, Mississippi, you learn certain life lessons the rest of the world is deprived of. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” for example. Well, that expression may not be exactly unique to our little neck of the woods, but that’s just the first part of the saying for us. It’s more properly finished with “… because that’s where you get no less than 45% of your daily gravy intake.” White, brown or (if you’ve just given up on caring about what people say about you behind your back) chocolate gravies serve a few simple purposes: (1) to provide moisture to food that might otherwise be dry, probably because groceries have gotten so high your stretching out your recipes by sprinkling in a little sawdust, (2) cover up the fact that no matter if you call it chicken fried steak or country fried steak it doesn’t change what meat you are eating … possum, and (3) contrary to popular belief, southern gravies make your heart stronger - just think how hard your heart has to pump to get that blood to flow through all those 95% artery blockages. Between the sweet teas, vapes and biscuit-related lubrication (be it gravy or jelly), we give our hearts a workout Jillian Michaels couldn’t conceive in her nutrient-deprived fever dreams. It’s a little known scientific fact that the average Iukean’s heart has six-pack abs.
As I mentioned earlier, folks unfortunate enough to be raised outside of Tishomingo County have different life experiences. For example, they probably didn’t have their wedding catered by a gas station. I know what you locals are thinking: how did the couple pull off their wedding toast without a Big Gulp Mountain Dew? Well, some folks live deprived lives and have to settle for champagne. Speaking of strange customs, folks in the Northeast - mostly of Italian descent - call spaghetti sauce “gravy.” That seems strange to most Southerners. We don’t have a lot of folks around who claim Italian heritage, mostly because any non-Great Britain background in Southerners is always explained away with, “My great-grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee” instead of the truth which is that she was 1/16th Siscilian and 15/16ths Irish criminal. I have to warn you, folks, if you find yourself in a restaurant in New Jersey and order “The Special with Mama’s Gravy,” you won’t be getting a hamburger steak. You’ll most likely be getting a cut of meat called ‘veal’ that I won’t bum you out by explaining to you what it is, covered with spaghetti sauce. They call the spaghetti sauce gravy, and then to add insult to injury, they don’t even have the courtesy to serve it over biscuits. Oh, they may say, Italian gravy comes with breadsticks, but we Southerners know that breadsticks are just biscuit dough that needs Jesus.
I know this talk of Chef Boyardee’s as gravy is enough to make my normal readers’ blood boil. And, no, not the normal kind of blood boil you get from the friction you have when your blood grinds through gravy-coated arteries. Calling tomato sauce gravy seems like one of the most devious con games the world has ever been exposed to outside of cell phone contracts. My point is this: we shouldn’t feel anger towards our Northeastern brethren. Reserve your rage for when you can’t get out of your AT&T Family Plan seven years after your divorce and NO, YOU DO NOT WANT TO BUNDLE WITH AT&T INTERNET AND A LANDLINE - WHO HAS A LANDLINE ANYMORE BESIDES 90 YEAR-OLDS AND FOREIGN GOVERNMENT AGENTS TRYING TO SCAM 90 YEAR-OLDS?!? (but I digress). What we lucky few here should feel is sympathy. Folks up North don’t get gravy with biscuits, fried chicken or whatever meat chicken fried steak is. It is tragic, really.
And if you feel sorry for them now, just wait til y’all hear they don’t have slug burgers, either.