#food-traditions

#food-traditions

Gravy runs in my veins. Tomato gravy. The kind that starts out at 8 a.m. on a stovetop and is still gently bubbling away come 5 p.m., slippery with fat from meatballs and sausages braised to unparalleled levels of tenderness. I am only half Italian, but it is certainly the louder half, descended from uncles who pounded a dinner table to punctuate a sentence, a grandfather who made wine in his basement, and a grandmother who wielded a wooden spoon like a scalpel in the kitchen and a cudgel everywhere else.

"Homecoming, church picnics, fish fries - they all share the same music, food and cadence as Juneteenth," said Nicole Taylor, author of 'Watermelon and Red Birds'.