Biscuits and Gravy

I both need to work on my photography skills and it is also not the most photogenic dish in the world.

I came late to the wonder of biscuits and gravy.  It was not something that I grew up with.  I know that my mother made pancakes on occasion.  She probably made french toast.  Our family tradition was pfannkuchen.  But that is definitely a different post.

The first time I tasted biscuits and gravy was on vacation.  We had escaped from LA and headed north, to the redwood forests.  It was the weekend that my youngest son turned one.  We went all the way up to Eureka, in Humboldt County.  Eureka is... not exactly a vacation spot.  I picked it because I vaguely remembered it being pretty when I had driven through there with my father years before.  It was.  It was also not very developed, the timber trade had wound down decades before.  There was an old cookhouse on Samoa Island.  We went there for breakfast with our two little boys.  Meals were served family style and it was there, on a foggy morning in August that I first tried biscuits and gravy.

It was a revelation to me.  The fluffy biscuits and the creamy, salty, sausage studded gravy.  I am not a big fan of sweet for breakfast and biscuits and gravy was perfect.  If I saw it on the menu, I would get it.  Biscuits are not a huge love of mine, so this was significant.  Sometimes it was horrible - dry, heavy biscuit with gluey gravy with no sausage in site.  Sometimes it was transcendent.  Yet for all of the things that I cook, I never made it at home.  I don't really know why.  I may have been hung up on the biscuits.  I never even thought to attempt them.  I saw and interesting recipe on pinterest and the rest is history.  I use refrigerator biscuits.  Maybe one day I will try my own, but for now these work fine.  I also use maple sausage.  I think this started because one time it was all I had.  It gives the gravy a little sweetness that balances out the salty.  I also cut up my biscuits before pouring the gravy on top and serve it in a bowl.  It isn't pretty or healthy but it is delicious.  And an ultimate comfort food.

Sausage Gravy:

16 ounces bulk maple sausage

3 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup flour

1 cup milk (more if the gravy is too thick)

salt and pepper to taste

Brown the bulk sausage in butter and break up.  Sprinkle flour on top and stir until incorporated.  Cook until browned.  Add milk until desired consistency.  Season with salt and pepper.

Pour over biscuits.

 

A Change in Purpose

 It surprised me when I flipped back to this blog and saw that my last post was in 2012.  It also made me a little happy because I still use all three of the recipes that I posted.  I think that I have even referred people back to it when they ask for a recipe.  Okay, when they ask me for the spring roll recipe.

2012 seems like a lifetime ago.  So many things have changed.  Where I live (hello, Southern Oregon), what I do (most of the last 9 years spent in nursing school), how many kids I have at home (two down, one to go).  I still love to cook, how and when and where have changed though.  I have tried to scale back my cooking to fit our family of three.  I admit that I don't really cook at all on the days that I work.  I do 12 hour shifts and I have at least a half hour commute.  I also am currently working nights.  That will change in August but for now, it is just not an option for me.  When I am home, it is still relaxing for me to go into the kitchen and putter around.  My grandmother used to use that word and I didn't quite know exactly what it meant.  I do now.  I chop vegetables, grate cheese, make stews and broths and freeze them.  My mother will be moving in with me in a few months and that will change things yet again.  Until then, while on nights, I eat an embarrassing amount of fast food or cafeteria food.  

My mother has a complicated relationship with both food and cooking.  When I think of growing up and foods that were touchstones, I have come to the realization that very few of them were ones that my mother made.  I was going to say none of them but then I realized that her bread is one of them.  When I was very small, my mother used to bake bread.  It isn't really the taste that I remember but the smell.  All the other things are things that my grandmother made.  Meatloaf, porcupine balls, potato soup and yes, consommé rice.  I did come to the realization that my grandmother was very much a cook of her time.  If there was a mix or a shortcut, she took it.  It makes me intensely happy that I have taken those recipes and made them my own and that my children get intensely nostalgic for them.  That is one of the best compliments out there and one that gets me back to the kitchen, even when I am tired and I don't want to.

I have collected cookbooks and recipes all of my adult life.  When Pinterest arrived, I was right there.  I have, literally, thousands of recipes.  A couple of years ago, I really started to see the futility of this.  There is no point in having thousands of recipes that you never use.  Particularly when you very rarely follow a recipe exactly anyways.  I go through spells of editing but it is a huge job.  There is a certain amount of experimentation too - I don't need 50 chocolate chip cookie recipes if I have one perfect one.  In order to get to the perfect one though, you have to try a lot of them.  I'm working on it.  

My last issue, and the biggest one at this moment is my own weight and health.  I am heavier now than I have ever been.  I have health issues that go along with it.  I am at least 25 pounds heavier than I was in 2012.  My problem is, I don't want to get bypass surgery.  I look at different diets and they make my heart sink.  There is no joy in either the eating or the making of the food.  I will never be able to maintain that.  I know how to cook and I know what I like.  Why can I not use that to get healthier?  There is actually anecdotal research into this.  There are cultures that celebrate food, both the making and the eating that do not have obesity problems even close to the US.  And they do not follow the same Spartan diets that we attempt in this country.  Eating is a joy, as it should be.