In the grocery store … near the baking aisle … are shelves filled with sauce packets. In essence, they are dry ingredients that when mixedwith ordinary tap water and stirred until incorporated will leap-frog a roux and land you a sauce.

My parents — who were not chefs but never burned or broke the flour and butter base that will become a rich and flavorful gravy — I am sure, would have given me a heaping measure of side-eye, not to mention curled-lip for tossing two packets of the stuff into my cart.

It goes against the grain.

Of all the things one should know, I can conjure my mother saying mid-lecture, is the simple act of making the thickening agent for a gravy from scratch. She (and my father, thanks to her practiced instruction) could do it in their........

© The Saratogian