Gravy remains elusive goal for all men

One of the great mysteries of life, along with black holes, the Boston Red Sox, the popularity of the movie “Ghostbusters” and Gary Shandling has to be the correct method of making gravy.

You take gravy for granted when you live with your mother, because it comes with every meal, especially stuffed turkey. You never see her make it, it was always just there.

Once a man is on his own, gravy, like eternal happiness, is an elusive goal. Perhaps that is what they taught females when they went off to learn the art of “home economics” in a high school room where the males were never allowed.

I have tried a few times with spectacular failure. I am not stupid. I bought the “Joy of Cooking” cookbook as a survival guide. Like most men, I learned a few basics to survive. I learned macaroni and cheese with eight different cheeses, baked stuffed chicken and a passable spaghetti sauce. That was about it. But gravy was way too much. That would be like learning to sew.

I tried and tried to make something called a “roux” from the recipe. That apparently is a French word for “ruined.” When I tried the recipe on my ex-children, they fled in terror. No sense of humor in those kids. Even I couldn’t eat the pastelike, tasteless, visually frightening mess.

In desperation, I actually took a recipe off a paper towel in an attempt to make the perfect gravy. The ex-children were more embarrassed that I was using a paper towel recipe than the gloppy mess it produced. That was 15 years ago and I am STILL hearing about it.

Women cannot throw a baseball. Men cannot make gravy. It is in the genes.

It’s not just me. My exclusive Camden estate, Cobb Manor, has evolved into a halfway house for divorced, recently expelled and ruined men. One daughter calls it “a home for unwed fathers.” An Australian illegal alien calls it “a home for gentlemen of reduced circumstances.” Other, less polite, observers, have called it, “House of Losers.”

The passing parade of tenants have all helped me prove my point that males are genetically indisposed toward making gravy.

One tenant, fresh from an incendiary divorce, pledged to make turkey gravy for our Thanksgiving dinner, before he passed out. This gravy would be as a welcome addition to the house. I gleefully passed the gravy torch.

But his exclusive recipe was to take the drippings from the bottom of the baked turkey pan, put them in a bowl, and serve.

Now, Cobb Manor holiday celebrants are a cut below the national average in intelligence, certainly, but even these diners looked at the congealed mass and said “No thanks.”

One said, “I know gravy. I have had gravy. My mother made gravy. That is not gravy.”

Over the years, I have developed my own recipe. Saute an onion in white wine, Worcestershire and brown to taste. Open a can of gravy. Pour over the onions and serve.

Keep you mouth shut.