Close to Nowhere - Linda Jones


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Close to Nowhere
By Linda Jones

We’re all foodies here

Tuesday morning started off fairly normal here at the newspaper office — exchanging recipes and discussing food.

We do that a lot around here, much to the chagrin of the editor and publisher. Never mind that he loves to eat what we bring — that is entirely beside the point on Tuesday when we’re proofing and finishing the paper and also discussing food and recipes.

Apparently men can’t multi-task as well as women. And Barry doesn’t cook, he just eats, so it’s less interesting to just talk about food maybe.

We’re always looking for something new, different, tasty and of course, low calorie.

Tasty and low calorie don’t often go hand-in-hand, but we do at least make the effort.

My current favorite cookbook is one I bought several years ago at a tomato festival in Ripley, Tenn. I’d dug out the cookbook to make our oldest granddaughter Meredith one of her favorite dishes — homemade Manwich. I know it’s really sloppy joes, but we can’t call it that for some reason.

While browsing through the cookbook — since it was out anyway — I found a recipe for meatballs and tomato gravy.

My mom used to make meatloaf and there was always tomato gravy to go with it — along with the English peas and mashed potatoes. Isn’t it amazing how some rules are set early in life and however many, many years later, just cannot be changed?

Anyway, back to the meatballs and tomato gravy — I cheated and bought the frozen meatballs and then just skipped that part of the recipe until I got to the tomato gravy part.

I haven’t eaten tomato gravy since I was a child, so I followed that recipe fairly closely — just quadrupling it.

And it turned out pretty good. I like the kind of frozen meatballs I always use, so they were a given and the tomato gravy was very interesting.

Daughter Dana said it was very similar to Swedish meatballs and I guess it was.

The only surprise I encountered was to find out that I’m not all that crazy about tomato gravy. It was OK, but nothing I’m probably going to want to make again anytime soon.

And the funny thing is — every cookbook I’ve looked through since I made the tomato gravy has had several recipes for — you guessed it — tomato gravy.

I’m now entertaining the notion of making my own Greek seasoning and Cajun seasoning.

Every brand I buy is chock full of either salt or potassium — Pop can’t eat either.

So, I’m going to make my own, out of several different recipes.

I could sure use some advice from the late Ray Smithers — he was the spice-making king!

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