Sausage Gravy and Biscuits

We are still in Pennsylvania visiting T's family until tomorrow. As we were sitting around the huge pan of lasagna last night our conversation once again turned to food. We started throwing out ideas for breakfast and someone mentioned sausage gravy and biscuits. My FIL's eyes went real big! This would be a huge hit in the morning. Funny thing is this is such a simple meal to make. Who knows why we don't have this more often!

Simple Biscuits (no idea where I got this from. I have been using it forever!)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 1 cup milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually stir in milk until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.
3. Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead 15 to 20 times. Pat or roll dough out to 1 inch thick. Cut biscuits with a large cutter or juice glass dipped in flour. Repeat until all dough is used. Brush off the excess flour, and place biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet.
4. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges begin to brown.

Now onto the sausage gravy. This is T’s deal. For some reason he has always been the cooker of the gravy!

Sausage Gravy (T’s recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1-1.5# loose breakfast sausage
• Flour
• Milk
• salt & pepper to taste
• Fresh Sage

Directions:

1. Fry sausage on medium high until cooked through. Add flour (estimate same amount of flour to grease produced by sausage) reduce heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes.
2. Start adding milk a cup at a time stirring until thickened then add another cup of milk until after 10 minutes of cooking gravy is not getting thicker.
3. Season with salt, pepper and fresh sage.

Serve the sausage gravy over the fresh baked biscuits and enjoy. This is one of our favorite breakfast and is always requested by guests!

As Always…

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

One very messed up day...

Sometimes s*** just happens.

Yesterday we had pretty much decided that we were just going to spend the day hanging around the house. We had a bunch of things that had been sorely neglected in the past few weeks - yard work, getting stuff picked up and just general everyday home things that are so easy to overlook and ignore! I got a bunch of cooking and baking done - bread for the girls lunches for the week, soup stock was on the stove bubbly away just waiting until dinner, one really failed batch of goat milk yogurt in my new yogurt maker and another one started, Banana-Chocolate Chip Squares (King Arthur Flour-Whole Grain Baking cookbook). Then it all started to go a little crazy.

The girls were outside playing and they had the Golden Retriever outside running around with them. Now these girls play really rough with this dog and we have warned them over and over that somebody was going to get hurt one of these days. Yesterday was the day! I was about to get into the shower and I could hear what they were doing...a lot of screaming, running, and yelling. The kids and dog both think that this is fairly harmless. But it was starting to sound a little out of control. So there I was with the shower ready nothing on but a tank top as I was about to get in and I thought that I should just tell them to settle it down a bit. Well that's when I saw it happen...my oldest daughter flying down the slide of the play set with the 85 lb Golden Retriever flying through the air and landing on her just as she hit the ground head first!!! For the first little bit I just kept and eye on her, got ice for the headache that she had (yup imagine that!). I went and finished my shower. I came back out to check on her and she was sleeping with a freezing cold ice pack on her head...this is when I started to get a little worried! We are not alarmist when it comes to the kids and we can ignore a ton of things without guilt but heads are another story.

I called T. and got him to come home (he was out at an impromptu meeting). I was able to wake her back up but at this point I wanted her looked at. Her face had started to swell a little too. So when T. got home off we all went to the ER. We got there and it was so disgusting! The whole place smelt like vomit and some people had already been waiting in there since 9 AM...at this point it was about 2:30 PM. We decided to take her outside and see if this was all really necessary (All I could think was that by us being in there we would catch something horrible and end up there again!!!!) We gave her some juice to drink and asked the triage people what we needed to check for. After going through the check list we decided that we really did not want to be there. We got her home and she seemed to perk up quite a bit. It think we made the right decision! She slept fine and she was okay this morning except for some achy body parts (no surprise there). Whew - It took me well over a bottle of wine to make me fine after that!!!!

Any way, the soup was still on the stove so we knew what was for dinner and you have seen enough of my soups to know what they look like and it was really to chaotic here to try and take pictures (also had a friend over for a quick meal with us-yep someone will actually voluntarily come and eat with us!). When she called and I invited her I was just making the biscuits. I had decided to try a new recipe also from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Cookbook.

Parmesan-Pine Nut Biscuits

Makes twelve to fourteen 2-inch biscuits

These are made with white whole-wheat flour, which has a milder flavor than its tan cousin. The biscuits would go nicely with smoked turkey or a creamy chowder. Adapted from "King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking" (Countryman Press, 2006).

2 cups (8 ounces) white whole-wheat flour (I only had regular whole wheat-white may have made them lighter)

1/2 cup (2 1/8 ounces) bread flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

4 ounces (1 stick) cold unsalted butter

1 cup (3 1/2 ounces) freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for the tops (topping optional)

1 cup (about 5 ounces) pine nuts

1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary (optional) (did not use T. doesn't like it)

1 large egg

1 cup (8 ounces) buttermilk, plus more for brushing the biscuit tops

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a large baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.

Combine the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large mixing bowl. Using a fork, two knives, a pastry cutter or a food processor, combine the butter with the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs. Add the cup of Parmesan cheese, pine nuts and rosemary, if desired.

In a small bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together the egg and buttermilk. Add to the flour mixture, blending lightly and quickly with a fork until the mixture is evenly moistened. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and, using a bench knife or dough scraper, fold the dough over on itself 3 or 4 times until it comes together. Pat or lightly roll out the dough until it is 3/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into squares or 2-inch rounds and transfer the biscuits to the prepared baking sheet. Stack the scraps on top of each other, fold them as you did for the original dough and pat out and cut again to form the rest of the biscuits. Brush the tops with buttermilk and sprinkle with more cheese, if desired. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. Serve warm, or transfer to a wire rack to cool; store in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

All in all it was a good day and thankfully my oldest daughter was not really hurt!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Could Sunday be Soup Day?

Yesterday was one of those days when I am so grateful to be living in Florida. We didn't really so too much but the weather has just been perfect. Nice and cool during the night and warm during the day. We went to Boca Grande. Spent some time on the beach and then went for lunch. All the while I was making soup at home!

When I was shopping last week I found some Turkey soup bones at the meat market. They were on sale so I grabbed them up and figured I would make a nice soup out of them. Turned out really good too!

Homemade Turkey/Mushroom/Wild Rice Soup - or Sunday Soup!

Stock

turkey bones
onion (quartered)
dried parsley (about a handful)
garlic (peeled)
1/2 tsp dried thyme
celery (rough chop)

Brown turkey in 2 Tbsp of olive oil. Add enough water to cover. Add remainng ingredients and allow to simmer for at least 4 hours (we left our on for about 8). Strain when finished. Keep the bones and the greens from the stock and return the strained stock the the stove top.

Turkey Soup

2 C. Wild Rice (uncooked)
1 C. dried mixed wild mushrooms
2 C. chopped Swiss Chard
2 tsp. Better Than Bouillon Turkey or Chicken Base

Add wild rice to the stock as well as the wild mushrooms. Allow to cook for about 1 hr. You may need to add some more water to your soup but be sure to add hot water. When the rice and mushrooms are done cooking you can take the stock ingredients that you saved and chop up some of the onion and garlic to return to the pot. Also pick all of the meat from the turkey bones and chop into bite sized pieces and add to the soup.
Now is when you will need to be taste testing the soup. I found that I needed about 2 tsp of soup base (Better Than Bouillon) and some ground pepper. Add the greens close to the end. You really just want them to steam down.

This soup was so good and earthy tasting. Even the girls loved it!!!

I made biscuits to go with this. I used a recipe from one of my favorite blogs...Life on A Southern Farm by GA Farmwoman.

Click here for recipe! This goes great with the local Orange Blossom honey that I bought last week.

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com