Now, about that tomato onion gravy.

my next-to-last quart of tomatoes

This is a simple sauce that, to my understanding, is often served with greens and some version of a cooked meal. In Mozambique, it’s xima (recipe below!), and in South Africa it’s pap, and then there are lots of other African variations on the theme, like sadza and ugali, etc.

Eucefe making last week’s xima.

But pairing tomato gravy with xima is only the starting point.

With tomato gravy in the fridge, you have the base for any number of fast, nourishing, flavorful meals.

• Instead of with xima, serve it over pasta or rice.
• Fry up a pound of ground beef with the onions for a meaty stew.
• Ladle it into a bowl and top with a boiled egg and a scoop of cottage cheese.
• Add cilantro, avocado, a scoop of beans, sour cream, and hominy.
• Eat it with buttered toast, or alongside grilled cheese, like a tomato chutney of sorts.
• Serve it next to grilled steak and mashed potatoes
• Pile high with greens — any kind! lots of them!
• Add a quart of broth, cubes of potato, and some cabbage or green beans — voila, soup! 

Making the gravy, it feels like you’re gonna be disappointed. Just tomatoes and onions? No garlic? No special seasonings? No cream or meat or basil?

Persevere, my friends. Let it simmer for a bit, and then simmer it a little more. After 15 minutes, it transforms into something much greater than the sum of its parts — intensely flavorful, stew-like, almost jammy.

with cottage cheese and greens

I am an enormous fan of reheating a bowlful of gravy and then topping it with whatever I have in the fridge for a mood-boosting, vitamin-packed power lunch to beat all power lunches.

with cottage cheese and a fried egg

No scurvy for me!

Tomato Onion Gravy
Adapted from this post on Food.com.

1 large onion, halved and quartered length-wise and then sliced thinly
fat (olive oil, lard, bacon grease, or butter)
4 cups chopped canned tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes teaspoon
1 teaspoon sugar, optional
salt and black pepper to taste

Saute the onion in a little fat until soft and tender, and only kissed with brown. Add the tomatoes, red pepper, and seasonings. Simmer over low heat for 15-20 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally.

***

Last fall, I wrote a story about Eucefe making xima for us. The voluteer agency that he works with published that story here, along with the recipe — or the recipe as I understood it back then.

Now that his English has improved, so has my understanding of how to make xima.

I made it the other night for supper (along with grilled steak, greens, and tomato onion gravy, of course).

He said I did it correctly — whoop! — and then he ate the leftovers for breakfast.

Eucefe’s Xima

2 cups water
1 cup (approximately) finely-ground white corn meal, like Iwisa

Put 2 cups of water in a saucepan. Turn on the heat. Begin sprinkling in some meal, a little at a time, stirring steadily. When the mixture starts to feel thick, stop adding meal.

Now, focus on stirring. Stir steadily and hard until the mixture is hot-hot, and it’s thick like cookie dough or mashed potatoes. Turn off the heat.

Spoon the xima into a serving bowl, dipping the spoon in a bowl of cold water between scoops.

To eat, scoop a bit of xima into one hand and knead it into a ball. Make an indentation and use it to scoop up the other food on your plate. (Or just eat it with a fork, like thick mashed potatoes.)

This amount feeds 2-4 adults.

This same time, years previous: Emily’s prize-winning tres leche cake, milkslinger, the quotidian (4.3.23), ground beef chili with chocolate and peanut butter, the coronavirus diaries: week four.

Last week we had my brother’s family over for supper, plus my sister-in-law’s two nephews who were staying the night with them.

For supper, I sauteed two big bunches of kale in my largest skillet. I made a South African-style tomato-onion gravy from a recipe I found online. Eucefe made xima. And then I also grilled a bunch of chicken and hardboiled a dozen eggs to serve on the side. For the dessert, I turned a half gallon of milk into pudding, dumped a quart of leftover huckleberry fill from the bakery into a bowl, and plated some old-fashioned brown sugar cookies I’d had in the freezer. 

I served the meal buffet style, hovering behind the island and chatting with everyone as they filed by. While the guest nephews filled me in on the whereabouts of their parents and their evening sleeping arrangements, they piled xima, tomato gravy, and greens on their plates before disappearing outside to eat their dinner by the firepit.

Later, when I played the evening back in my head, I was surprised to discover that it was the nephews that stuck with me. Not the boys themselves — I didn’t talk with them that much — but the way they matter-of-factly approached the meal. That night’s food was plain, yes, but also unusual, yet those boys didn’t even bat an eye. Instead, they took enthusiastic portions and then ate it, the end.

In a culture glutted with choice, preference, food obsessions, and health fads, the simple act of eating what is served — no questions, no picking, no whining, no hesitation — is astonishing.

Which is exactly what made it an evening headliner.

P.S. All the people scarfed the meal (except probably my younger son didn’t help himself to greens? not sure, didn’t see…), and when the meal was over, all that was left was a little tomato gravy, three eggs, a scoop of huckleberry fill, and a few cookies. What was special about the nephews was that they were children and my cooking was new to them.  

This same time, years previous: eight fun things, a special weekend, six fun things, how we homeschool: Jane, the quotidian (3.30.20). Asian slaw, for-real serious, the art of human rights, absorbing the words, the quotidian (3.30.15), the quotidian (3.31.14), Good Friday fun, braided bread.

After months of brainstorming and discussion, my husband and I have finally chosen our grandparent names.

I am going to be Ama. I made up the name by removing the M from Mama, which is what my kids called me. (Since announcing it, I’ve learned it’s a name that lots of other grandmas use, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it until I came up with it myself.) To me, the name invokes simplicity, warmth, earthiness, and practicality.

I puzzled out the name last week while I was holding the baby, so I ran it by him. “Well, hello there, lovey boy, it’s your Ama,” and then I paused to see how I felt. Did the name clang and clunk? Did I feel embarrassed? Was it weird?

Calling myself Ama felt strange, sure (because having a new name is kinda odd), but it didn’t feel put-on or phoney. It felt like me. So later, when I ran the name by my daughter, my husband, and my mother, and no one appeared appalled, I knew my months of indecision were over.

The poll my nieces and nephews made upon learning a baby was on the way.

My husband’s name was harder, mostly because he never thought about it, and then when he did think about it, it was only under duress and then he just vetoed all my suggestions.

The only name that he was even remotely receptive towards was Papi — pronounced “poppy” but not spelled that way because “I don’t want my name to be a flower.” 

He was drawn to Papi because he was “Papa” to our children (though they usually call him either his actual name or Dad), because I often call him Papi just for fun, and because it’s a common name in the Spanish-speaking places we’ve lived. To both of us, the name has a cozy, warm feeling.

So there you have it: we are Ama and Papi.

Of course, whether or not the wee one accepts our choices remains to be seen.

But whatever happens, we’re here for it — and for him.

This same time, years previous: six good things, redbud, the quotidian (3.28.22), update from the north, milk bread, the quotidian (3.26.18), the quotidian (3.27.17), more springtime babies, seven-minute egg, our oaf, a list, a spat.