Good Ol' Home Cookin'

Today has been another stormy, chilly day. What ever happened to Spring??? We didn't have soccer practice so I decided that we were going to eat what we had at home. I try to just eat out of the pantry at times instead of running to the store every other day buying tons of groceries. We are in the middle of a recession, right?

I looked in the fridge and noticed that I bought *Sausage* the other day. Real sausage - the Jimmie Dean kind. Can you tell I've been really watching my weight watcher points because sausage excites me? I decided since it's rainy and stormy outside, we would have Biscuits and Gravy. When I was a kid, my Momma fixed biscuits and gravy all the time. She's from Alabama and it's a staple in her life. There is nothing like a big plate of flaky biscuits piled high with cream gravy with chunky pieces of sausage. Hm, hm, good!

Here's the recipe - and in the South we usually just eyeball the measurements - sorry if its hard to follow that way.

Brown your sausage patties.

Nothing like greasy, er...I mean...plump, juicy sausage patties.

While the sausage is cookin' away, preheat your oven to 350 degrees or whatever the biscuit directions say. Put your biscuits in the oven about 5 minutes before you're done with the sausage patties. I use Wal-mart's generic brand, Good Value biscuits. They taste the exact same to me. But, get the flaky kind because they soak up the gravy better. By this time, I'm really getting hungry.

When the sausage was almost done, I remembered that Mr. Hautemama had bought some of that old-fashioned kind of bologna at the store. A real treat is to cut your bologna in slices and fry it in the pan in the grease from the sausage. Now, that is something my dear, departed Dad would cook me when my Mom was in nursing school when I was a really little kid. It was his speciality - fried bologna sandwiches! Yummy! And for people who aren't from the South or Midwest, I swear to you that we don't eat like this all the time. Just on rare special occasions! HA!

Next, remove the sausage (and bologna) from the pan but keep all of the grease in the pan. That's where all the flavor in the dish is going to be. Add about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, then about 1/4 cup of flour or enough to stir in with all the oil. You need to brown the flour to cook the flour taste out of it. Keep stirring, if it seems like it needs a little more oil, put a little more in. There are no rules, just go by feel. That's something my Mom would say. When your 1/4 cup or so of flour has browned, pour about a cup of milk in. Keep stirring and it will thicken. If it doesn't seem like enough gravy or it gets a little thick - add some more milk. Then salt and pepper. It's that simple. After a while, you'll end up with this:

Cream gravy with sausage! Food of champions! Now put it on a plate and serve with the fried bologna! This isn't our dinnerware. This is one of the kid plates that I serve my sons! Sunny yellow! But when you're on Weight Watchers - you might want to just eat a biscuit with some Polaner's fruit spread. I didn't eat the gravy - but the biscuit is only 4 points. And....it's worth every stinkin' point! Ha!

Dinner was great and Mr. H is now watching basketball. I have no idea why, but I don't really like to watch basketball. I'm a football girl, through and through. Basketball might be too fast for me - who knows. I was 5'4" in the 2nd grade and Dad's from all over town would call our house when I was a kid and beg my Dad to put me in basketball. I was so shy I didn't want to do it. I played softball and tennis. That's all I wanted to do. Oh, and I'm still 5'4" in my thirties. I just grew super fast. Guess if I'd have played the sport I might like it.

My little T-man did his report today on Hawaii. He said the poster board he did last night got a 100%. Yay!