My History with Chocolate Gravy
In my family, chocolate gravy has never been just a recipe.
My grandmother Patty Lou made it for us when I was growing up—a warm, ridiculously sweet pan of chocolate poured over homemade biscuits. It was the kind of breakfast that made children appear in the kitchen without being called.
Years later, when I began writing The Inheritance of the Beaumont Women, I found myself returning to chocolate gravy again and again. Because the things women pass down aren't always money or jewelry or family heirlooms.
Sometimes they're stories. Sometimes they're strength.
And sometimes they're recipes.
Meet the Real Patty Lou
Before there was Patty Lou Beaumont Gentry on the page, there was my grandmother. Or as I like to call her, The OG Real Housewife of The Hill.
The real Patty Lou grew up in extreme poverty in North Mississippi. She was funny, stubborn, practical, fiercely loyal and entirely capable of saying something outrageous with a perfectly straight face.
She also made chocolate gravy.
Some of what you'll find in The Inheritance of the Beaumont Women came from stories she told me. Much of the novel is fiction. But Patty Lou's voice, her humor, the world she came from—and this recipe—are part of the inheritance she left me.
The Real Recipe
Passing It On
I've made Patty Lou's chocolate gravy more times than I could count. And now I make little jars of the dry mix to give away—because apparently this is how I became the sort of person who sends people home with chocolate gravy.
I'm okay with that.
Recipes survive because somebody keeps making them. Stories aren't much different.
Chocolate gravy found its way into my novel because it belonged there.
The Inheritance of the Beaumont Women is a story about the things women inherit from one another—love and damage, secrets and strength, old wounds and the stubborn hope that maybe the next generation can do something different with all of it.
At the center are Patty Lou and her granddaughter Izzy, two women separated by generations but connected by much more than either of them realizes.
And somewhere in all of that is a pot of chocolate gravy.
Of course there is.
So, pull up a chair.
Join me for Southern stories, behind-the-book pieces, family recipes and news about The Inheritance of the Beaumont Women. And you don’t have to be kin to get some of Patty Lou’s Dry Mix. Just ask me for a sample. :)