Sauce or Gravy?

I finally feel in the mood to really, truly blog again! Today was a good day. The first good day in a few weeks. Finally!

John has a special love for meatball sandwiches and this week I added them to our meal plan to oblige his neverending request for them. Last time we had them, we got everything from the Italian deli near our house, including the meatballs. This time, I made the meatballs and just purchased the sauce and rolls at the deli.

Into my meatball mix went:
- 1 pound organic ground beef
- 1 egg
- About 1/2 cup bread crumbs
- 1/2 red onion diced
- Sprinkle of kosher salt

These were mostly clean, except for the bread crumbs. I need to make my own bread crumbs, but I've yet to attempt it. I dumped all the ingredients into a bowl and mixed with my hands. Then I formed the meat into even size balls and placed on a foil-lined cookie sheet. I baked at 350 for about 25 minutes.

While the meatballs were baking, I put the cold sauce from the deli into a sauce pan and began heating it through on a low temperature.

I also cut up some broccoli to make roasted broccoli. Once the meatballs came out of the oven, I put them in the sauce and threw the broccoli into the oven to cook.

I served them in club rolls and sprinkled a bit of parm cheese on top. It really hit the spot.

Ideally, I'd like to make my own sauce, but John is Italian. He is very used to his mom's sauce. Until I have the chance for her to show me, I'd rather just buy the sauce at the Italian deli because he likes it and it's easy. Someday I will learn and I'm sure it will be worth it then.

And this brings me to the title of the post. Obviously, I call the sweet tomato liquid "sauce." John also calls it sauce. Many people call it "gravy." I find it extremely interesting when people call things by different names. What do you call it?