Good morning all. Great to have you back.

Got a few ghosts to chase today and maybe we’ll find a distant remnant of a memory that had been buried in my head for decades.

As always inspiration is a challenge when you write weekly food posts every goddamn Sunday during a seven month long NFL offseason so I challenge my brain to come up with new themes and concepts.

I thought of one too! I hope this concept works for some of you because it’s…different?

For today and next week the theme is going to be grade school cafeteria food.

I know, I know, not the sexiest concept but one I think we can all relate to.

Remember these?

The good old school cafeteria lunch menu.

Ma would stick this on the refrigerator and keep it in place with a refrigerator magnet for the week.

Had any favorites from your time?

Most of the cafeteria food options left me pretty fucking cold. Honestly, I was a brown bagger most days and I’m sure my parents were glad for that too.

I had this bad motherfucker as my lunch box at the time.

Bonanza lunch box, bitches!

I had exactly two cafeteria favorites and I’m going to cook one this week and one next week.

Your standard cafeteria menu back in the prehistoric days when I was in grammar school consisted of your basic shit like hamburger on a bun with fruit salad or fries and one of those apple brown betty squares. Our school did hot dogs one day, they also did fish sticks and macaroni and cheese, there was a pizza day – which was bloody fucking horrible by the way – and a meatloaf day.  I seem to remember sloppy joes and this thing they called a “Sea Dog Sandwich” which was 3 fish sticks on a goddamn hot dog bun.

It’s funny that the longer I thought on this topic today the more distant memories forced their way to the surface.

Like this for instance…

Remember the little 8 ounce milk cartons? Oh shit! There was also a “Milk Monitor” right? Some student sat on this chair and dispensed the milk cartons one at a time, remember? I did that shit too! I know this!

Oh fuck! They cost a nickel apiece!

Most days I had my bagged lunch and just brought my nickel to get milk for my lunch.

Goddamn, I am resurrecting some old ass memories today!

As far as eating the cafeteria food I only did this through grammar school. By the time I got to junior high I was strictly brown bag for lunch and when I got to high school I stopped eating lunch period. We had a group of us who played basketball every day instead of eating lunch. The gym was open and we played hoops for an hour before going to our afternoon classes all sweated out and shit.

That’s actually pretty fucking disgusting now that I think about it. Right in line for your average teen.

Anyway.

Oh fuck! My grandmother on Ma’s side was a school cafeteria lady for awhile too.

This is like hypnosis therapy and shit.

Todays’ meal was one of my favorites. If it was on the cafeteria menu I was eating in the motherfucking cafeteria that day. I remember the cafeteria called this dish “Braised Beef.” It’s a gravy made with hamburger meat that’s served over mashed potatoes.

Told you it wasn’t sexy but goddamn did I love this shit growing up. Should be obvious from the very title of my weekly ramblings that I love me some damn gravy. You put a gravy together and drop that shit on some mashed potatoes? You made my damn day.

The very first time I remember cooking for my entire family I was 12 and for my birthday I wanted to cook dinner for everyone.

Seriously.

I chose this meal to make but Ma couldn’t find the exact recipe and we were a few goddamn decades removed from the internet to research shit. I made something tasty but it wasn’t exactly this.

Love it, hate it, what the fuck ever but this baby fits the “Institutional, feed a goddamn bunch of people cheap” moniker perfectly.

Let’s do this shit.

School Cafeteria Style Braised Beef!

1 pound of hamburger

1/2 cup of onion finely diced

1 garlic clove minced

1 tablespoon of cooking oil.

1/2 tablespoon of Worcestershire Sauce

1 tablespoon of Better Than Bouillon – beef flavor

3 tablespoons of flour

1 cup of beef stock

1 cup of whole milk

Salt and pepper to taste.

 

Want easy?

You got your meat.

You got your potatoes.

You’ve got your nice generic vegetable-ish food group.

I really wish I could share how tasty this is with you because I’m not sure the photos do this justice.

We start by mincing the onion. A pretty fine mince for a smoother gravy consistency.

This will shock exactly no one. Let’s saute them! Add the oil to a sauce pan and get those onions in there.

Cook the onions over medium heat for about 6-7 minutes until softened and translucent.

Get that meat into the pan with the sauteed onions.

This won’t need to brown for very long, just long enough to cook the pink out. This will have a pretty long simmer to finish building a proper gravy.

Something like this for the meat.

We require just a bit of garlic today. One clove should suffice.

Add the minced garlic to the pan and cook just until the garlic becomes aromatic.

We will start building the gravy by sprinkling 3 tablespoons of flour right over the browned meat.

Basically the rendered fat from the hamburger will be the fat for the “roux” today. And look! No draining of the fat required!

“It’s your window to weight gain.”

Not overly complicated with the seasonings today.

Maybe half a tablespoon of this…

Then a tablespoon of that…

Get yourself a cup of this…

Then add the stock along with 1 cup of whole milk. You heard me! Milk!

This is a cross between a brown gravy and a cream gravy. A “Hybrid” gravy if you will.

Right into the pan with the simmering beef.

Then simmer away for 30 minutes, low to medium/low heat please. The milk may look like it’s trying to separate at first but just keep stirring away there, Julia Child.

See? I’m not completely insane.

Well. Actually.

Season the gravy with salt and pepper to taste.

While the gravy is simmering you know what you’ve got to do next.

Peel them spuds.

Now you’ve got to boil them spuds. Cut the potatoes into chunks, cover with salted water and bring to a boil.

Cook to your desired tenderness.

And of course you’ve got to mash them spuds.

I always add about 2 tablespoons of butter, a pour of whole milk and some salt and pepper to my potatoes.

Pretty sure the school cafeteria used instant potatoes – more on that next week – but plain old homemade mashed potatoes are glorious with this gravy.

Mix until mashed smooth.

Potatoes on the plate, gravy on the potatoes and a side of corn.

Get in close on the gravy.

There we are. A bit on the monochromatic side right? Kind of generic “School cafeteria” looking beige gravy yes?

I promise you that you will fucking LOVE this dish.

Maybe it’s the nostalgia talking but this is stupid delicious. You saw the ingredients. Pretty straight forward but this fucker just WORKS I tell you.

Savory, meaty, rich, beefy gravy. The fluffy texture and creaminess of the mashed potatoes works as the perfect delivery vessel for the gravy. Again, this is one of those meals that can hurt you. You’ll be on your third serving and think “Fuck, I probably should have stopped on my second plate.” But that’s just it! You can’t stop.

Oh yeah, there was corn too.

I can’t help it dammit I was finicky as shit when growing up. Especially with my vegetables. Naturally I grew out of that but still. Corn was my goddamn jam, man!

Any current restaurant or former restaurant workers in here remember this stuff?

A big ass number 10 size can-o-corn?

I remember a brand called “Cock of the Walk” that had the number ten cans of veggies. And I bet you that was what the school used too.

You got your gravy and your mashed potatoes and your corn?

When I was about 10 this would have been my “Death Row” menu and I’m completely serious.

It’s still fucking tasty too. I hadn’t had this shit in almost [whispers quietly] like 50 fucking years. I’m a bit relieved too. The thought of making this today just came to me and I researched the hell out of it before making it and it turned out I already knew how to do this shit anyway.

I just hoped I wasn’t remembering the dish too fondly from my youth and maybe it wouldn’t be that great when produced.

Nope.

This fully earned “The Sunday Gravy Motherfucking Stamp of Approval.”

It’s stupid good.

Hope I brought back some memories to everyone out there. When I started out on this I had no idea of the power of nostalgia and in turn had no indication how it would go. Once I put my mind to it, it was like putting in a 5 1/4″ floppy drive and rebooting the old memory banks. The memories just flooded back in.

That was really pretty fun.

Hope you had fun too.

Come back next week when I will try and duplicate another childhood school cafeteria menu. I have good feelings about that one too.

Take care everyone.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Be Safe.

Be Well.

PEACE!