Summer Breakfast: Tomato Gravy, Biscuits, Fried Eggs, Sausage, Cantaloupe, & Syrup with Butter

this morning I'm going to make one of the breakfast that we really enjoy during the summer months I'm going to make tomato gravy I'll tell you a little bit about that just in a minute first I'm going to put I've got some sausage that Papa brought us that he made and it's froze so I'm just going to I've got me a bowl full of warm water there and I'm just going to set those in there and let them be kind of falling out I should have put them in the refrigerator last night before I went to bed but I didn't do that so the tomato gravy talk about it a little bit I did not grow up eating tomato gravy I never even heard of it never knew anybody that eat it we had gravy often at Granny's house but granny made uh think of meat gravies whether it was sausage bacon even fatback gravy and she made sometimes she made sawmeal gravy what we called sawmeal gravy which was she made gravy the same way except she used cornmeal instead of flour in it we also had chocolate gravy had chocolate gravy one my favorites favorite things for breakfast for sure but we didn't really um as far as other gravies now Pap really liked gravy when you think about like making it if you fried some chicken or maybe you fried pork or anything like that or maybe at Thanksgiving when you want to make gravy with the turkey he really liked that and sometimes he would do it but granny really never did she never she never did did any of those gravies that I remember Matt does that sometimes with some kind of we have pork chops or something he'll say let me make a pan of gravy you know where I've fried the pork chops but mostly I'm like granny and I typically just make the gravies the the ones that she made when I was growing up so anyway like I said didn't know anything about tomato gravy but once I started writing for the Blind Pig and the acorn people kept telling me about it you know did did your grandma did your mama make tomato gravy I was like no no and and one way I couldn't really wrap my mind around what tomato gravy would be like but on the other hand I love tomatoes in the summer with breakfast I love to have a fried egg and biscuits and you know whether it's bacon or sausage or whatever and then a big slice of tomato fresh from the garden I think it just oh it just goes so well together and I really start enjoying that way back in the day when um I met Matt when I was working at Lake Logan out in Haywood County it was a meeting facility for Champion International at that time so they people come there there was lodging so they would stay have their meetings they could fish they could go on trips to go golfing uh there was a driving range you know just various little things they could course go hiking things like that but because there was log there had to be you know somewhere for them to eat so we would get to go over there and get breakfast sometimes and I I think it was one of my cousins that you know I noticed she started eating like a tomato with in the Su it was always in the summer when we worked with her eggs and uh toast and stuff and so I started doing that and I thought man that just goes so good together so ever since then I I love it too um mostly in the summer though we really don't even buy tomatoes in the winter it's because they're almost you know tasteless if you get them from the grocery store now I would buy them if I if I'm going to make something that needs Tomatoes something like that but as far as just buying them to eat every week we don't do that and if I do buy them most of the time I buy the little bitty ones because the ones we call Tommy toes because they seem to have more flavor anyway when I first you know when I kept hearing about tomato gravy I thought well I've got to at least try it I've got to try it so I did and we really liked it in fact I liked it so much that I put it in m in Jim cadus cookbook celebrating Southern Appalachian food and and I'm going to read you the um entry here and if you've not got your cookbook I'll put the information in the description below so you could go pick one up but tomato gravy it's very very easy to make too you need 2 tablespoons of allpurpose flour you need 2 tablespoons of bacon drippin now if you didn't want to use bacon drippin if you didn't want to use bacon grease I suppose you could use you could try butter you could use um you know one of the oils if you wanted to like vegetable oil or something like that but the bacon really gives a great flavor if You' got bacon grease a dash of sugar two cups of peeled and chopped tomatoes water or milk if you if you need it it kind of depends this is like a lot of gravies it's after you make it it's kind of by feel and so it really depends on how juicy your tomatoes are you may need to add a little additional liquid or you may not and it also depends on how do you like your gravy do you like it really thick like a pudding or do you like it more thin I'm of the thin I like a thin Gra gravy just like I like the thin broths when you think about soup beans and bolded cabbage and soups and all those kind of things I really love that broth but I like it on the on the thin side and then salt and pepper to taste now you could dress it up and put other things in it if you wanted to um but that's that's all I do and as far as the amount like if you wanted to decrease that like you know if you if you're familiar with making gravy you could easily do that of course you could increase the amount you could double it all and make a huge big big old pot of tomato gravy so now I'll go ahead and read the directions even though I'll show you how to do it and again it's very very simple add flour to hot bacon drippings and cook over medium heat for 1 to two minutes or until flour is browned while stirring readily or steadily you have to stir it you know to keep it from Burning Season the taste with salt and pepper as the mixture Cooks stir in tomatoes and a dash of sugar and that sugar if you probably if you made spaghetti sauce and things like that often they'll tell you to put Just A Pinch of Sugar or something and it really cuts the um acidity of the tomatoes and if you want to leave that out though you could sure sure leave it out cover and cook over low heat until mixture thickens depending on how juicy the tomatoes are you may need to add milk or water to thin the gravy to the desired consistency this recipe is a favorite summer breakfast item in many parts of the appalachin and then our tip that we put in the cookbook is canned tomatoes may also be used A variation is to sauté diced onion in the bacon drippings before adding the tomatoes I've had a lot of people tell me that they do that but I don't ever do that um I should though CU it probably be really tasty but I've just never tried it so now I'm going to chop up my tomatoes I'm going to get my gravy going and then the sausage probably already getting already starting to Tha out I can feel that and then I'll do my biscuits and then I'll have eggs and I'll be ready to eat so the tomatoes I'm using from our garden I've got a Cherokee purple here that's kind of wonky and got a bad place on the bottom I don't know I probably should cut it up first just to use it and get it done and these others aren't they beautiful aren't those beautiful tomatoes this is the first year that we've grew these and we got the seeds from Debbie at Bryson Farm Supply and didn't really have a name with it it says it's from the the notes that her husband had took about it who somebody brought in the seeds to them is how they would accumulate these seeds and they didn't really ever accumulate enough to sell them they just had some like a almost like a seed bank if you think about it but anyway it said it from the early 1900s and it's been really prolific for us and you see they almost every tomato was about that big a big old tomato good for a tomato sandwich but uh really great flavor different than the our favorite Cherokee purple it's not as deep and Rich and like kind of Dusky I don't know as the Cherokee purple purple Cherokee purple uh but it's it's like a brighter tomato flavor and I don't know it's it's different but really equally as good I think so I think we'll be growing this one for a long time to come now of course as far as I've got my Raa little tomato knife works great but as far as how you cut it and all that there's a um numerous ways to go at it and you could even like get you some boiling water and put the Tomato in there and um oh it's pretty on the inside and then peel it that way but I usually don't do that I usually just cut it up into quarters and kind of gently peel with this this great tomato knife I could link to one of those in the description too if you don't have one it works fantastic on tomatoes and peaches and things like that that are soft Matt an Wanda got us this ages ago I don't know how I ever lived without it just really really works well as far as dicing up the Tomato again there's really no right or wrong way to do it and you could even leave them hole like that it would just you just have to kind of chop them up in the pan but dicing them up really lets them cook up faster if you will when I get done I'll have to pour all my juice in there I don't want to lose that wonderful juice Cherokee purples are so juicy just like literally it's just ponding up on the inside I'm going to have to cut the bad places out of this [Music] one even with the terribly dry weather our Tomatoes did good we usually have good luck with tomatoes it's one thing that we can do well with we have over the years had to figure out what grows you know every little everywhere you're at uh you have your own little climate even from sometimes even from your like I think of here in Wilson Haller where I'm at mine's probably I know it is slightly different than my Uncle Henry's like the first house coming into the hauler because his is more flat and then um probably gets more Sunshine so every little Garden area has its own climate you kind of got to figure out what works good for you what grows good for you what grows good for you may not grow good for your neighbor uh four or five houses down of course soil and all that has something to do with it too so I think I'm going to go I'm almost at two cups maybe I'll see if I can find me a smaller tomato here got a basket of tomatoes I've got to do something with today so that's where I it's easy for me to go get another one I got another Cherokee purple they smells so good it's about starving me to death I'm hungry Matt's out working on our driveway we we did finally get rain last night we got a good rain U I don't know how good I mean I'm grateful for it but I wish it had just rained all night said in and rained all night it didn't but it was a storm and it was really had a lot of rain with it so we'll take what we can get for sure but it did wash the driveway so he's trying to put it back in shape might be a little bit over two cups but that'll be okay now let's see if I can better go over to the sink to try to capture all my juice okay now I'm going to go over to the stove and start the gravy I'm going to add my two tablespoons of bacon grease here let it be heating up a lot of people ask me about leaving my bacon grease on the counter here it's people I mean experts will say don't do that that you shouldn't do that you should keep it in the refrigerator I do leave mine on the counter that's how when I was growing up granny had you probably remember those little and I guess she still has it little metal cans that say said grease on them or something um with a lid and she just leave it sitting in the middle of their stove but um one of the reasons I mean I feel comfortable doing it it's cuz Granny did and then also because like granny I will use it often so if I was just going to leave it here and not use it for 6 months I wouldn't do that I'd put it in the refrigerator but again you should probably follow the advice of the experts so we'll let that heat up just a minute more before we add the um flour and the seasoning salt and pepper again you could use whatever you would like to it's probably heated up enough now for us to add the add the flour I'm just going to put Matt likes a lot of pepper so I'll probably please him this morning and add a lot Miss Cindy salt shakers I think I shared that with you we're using her salt and pepper shakers and my goodness her salt comes out fast compared to our old one we've had to learn to be [Music] careful and we're just going to let this cook for about 2 minutes so you can see it does turn turn a brown color I think we're ready to add the tomatoes I'm just going to add them all at once now that I've got it all all mixed up there I'm going to put a Le lid on it and let it um cook I'll keep an eye on it though while I'm making my biscuits and my other things to make sure that it you know that I don't need to add any other kind of uh liquid and if I do add liquid which I probably will before it's over with I add milk I use milk you could use water though certainly you could use more tomato juice you can get you some more tomato juice and use it but we'll see if once those little pieces begin to cook up and um see how much moisture they let out it's going to be good so in the old days when I would do something like this I would use either a piece of tin full to cover cuz I never really had a pan um lid that fit good you know over a certain like a pan like this sometimes I would just set a um bread pan or a cookie sheet on top of it and use that I'm also going to turn it down just slightly turn down the heat there but I would put a bread pan over it and let that be my be my lid but a few years ago wonderful subscriber sent me like an allpurpose what do you call that I guess like kind of an allpurpose lid that would fit various different pots and it really does and it really does work good so that's what I use now is this now on to the biscuits I use uh whipping cream to make my biscuits this recipe is also in the cookbook M and Jim's cookbook and I have several videos I can link to some some of them down below gives more detail about it really easy biscuit to whip up and really good this morning I usually use just U my old wonky cookie sheet but this morning I'm going to use I've got my cast iron uh Skillet here little flat we call them like a spider pan I don't know if that's really the correct name for them or not anyway I've got some bacon grease on it and that's what I'm going to use this morning I went ahead and put Papa's sausage in in a pan and so it's over there frying up I checked on the checked on the gravy and turned it down a little bit more it's just about done and I'm not sure I'll have to add any kind of liquid or not I'll have to check that out right before I am ready to serve it I like the really crunchy edges of biscuits so I leave a little space between mine whether I'm putting them on a cookie sheet or if I'm using the cast iron and I like my biscuits more on the thin side inste of those U cat head biscuits you often hear people talking about but this recipe makes really good cathead re uh biscuits if you wanted to wanted to have them big okay the baby biscuit this time's almost as big as the others but there it is I'm going to put these in the oven let them be cooking I think check on the sausage and the gravy have to do the eggs get out some jelly I'm I'm really wanting sorghum serrup this morning so I'm going to get some of that out and we'll be ready to eat soon just check on the the gravy again it's looking really good I don't think I'm going to have to add any milk or water those Tomatoes were so juicy so I've turned it down on low and I'm just going to let it continue to cook while I'm frying the eggs and waiting on the biscuits and the sausage you know what I forgot though I just realized I never did put the sugar in did I so wouldn't have been it'd still be good even if it didn't but I will get a little bit now and put it just a little kind of takes the bite out of the tomatoes slightly and and somehow enhances their flavor too I think but of course you could leave it out if you didn't want to put it in and I almost did that see how beautiful it turned out it's going to be good you ready to eat Matt y I'm going to take Matt the honey and serup or serup for me over in some butter Looks Like A Feast for sure need some sausage get a biscuit I crumble my biscuits up Matt does his the other wayoo hot too too this wonderful gravy over them I'm going to be sure to take me a biscuit to put my sorghum syrup in too and I love cantaloupe with breakfast again like the tomatoes goes with breakfast I think cantaloupes do too me some coup there me my extra little biscuit to take with me I'll let me try the tomato gravy a wonderful fresh tomato taste along with the bacon grease really gives it that hint of bacon like if you like BLTs you probably like tomato gravy the bacon grease really along with the tomatoes the smoothness and the acidity of them really gives it a hearty feel though most gravies are like that they're really like something you feel like would stick to your ribs they say this one for sure just because of that rich bacon flavor got to have it with a little piece of Peppa's sausage I should have got me a napkin really delicious a lot of people have asked me for Papa sausage recipe I don't have it maybe someday I could get him to show us how he makes it though biscuits have that perfect little crunch really fantastic summer breakfast I hope you enjoyed seeing how to make tomato gravy if you love it tell me about it tell me how maybe you've got a variation maybe you do something different maybe you add those onions that we mentioned as a tip in the book I'm going to go over here with Matt enjoy the rest of our breakfast and get me some sorghum syrup for my biscuit I'm always glad when you stop by to help me celebrate 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