Winter Breakfast

[kit]

Here's a breakfast I make occasionally on wintery Sunday mornings...

Country Sausage Gravy and Whatever

Put a hunk of Jimmy Dean sausage along with some chopped onion into a large pan. Fry slowly, breaking the sausage into small bits.   Add some chopped garlic.  When sausage is cooked (don't drain the pan), sprinkle the top with flour, a little sage, a pinch of thyme and salt-and-pepper to taste and simmer for a couple of minutes while stirring. Turn heat to medium and add some milk. As it slowly boils and thickens, continue adding milk until it thins to the consistency you like (it will thicken as it cools).

You can pour this over biscuits or toasted English muffins, but I fry a couple of eggs and put them on top of a freshly cooked pancake or two and cover the whole thing with the gravy. Yum!

[Clipper]

I basically make my gravy the same way you do Kit with the exception of the thyme. I have not tried that. I also use evaporated milk for the gravy. It just makes it a little creamier and rich. It is simply a thing I learned from a woman I knew in the Midwest years ago. She made the best sausage gravy and biscuits, and the best fried chicken of any gal I ever knew.

I will have to try the gravy on pancakes. That sounds really good.

I absolutely love sausage gravy on mashed potatoes too. Any breakfast gravy left over is quite often used at dinner to smother my mashed taters.

How do you manage to stay thin with all the great cooking that you do?

[kit]

Clipper, you haven't seen me lately but I've put on a few pounds.

I like your idea of sausage gravy on mashed potatoes. It's so simple to make and would probably go with many different things. I wonder how it would be on home fries?

The idea of putting fried eggs on top of pancakes with syrup came from when I was going to the Photography conventions at the hotels in the borscht belt. One of my colleagues did his that way and suggested I try it, so I did, and loved it. Substituting the sausage gravy for the syrup was just a crazy idea, but it worked. The thyme and sage are really optional. It depends on the kind of sausage you use.

My brother's wife Sherry in Florida makes the best biscuits I've ever had. She's from Alabama and ever since she was a little girl she's made them without a recipe, which is typical. It's just a natural thing with her. Whenever I'm down there visiting I ask her to make the biscuits and I make the sausage gravy. I'm afraid to suggest she try the eggs on pancakes with the gravy. Maybe it's a Yankee thing and she's definitely a Reb so she'd probably shoot me.

[Clipper]

Funny you would mention putting the gravy on home fries. The old Jet Diner in Marcy used to serve a breakfast special called a garbage plate or something similar to that. It was biscuits, home fries with onions, smothered in sausage gravy with three fried eggs laid on top. I loved it. I used to order the eggs sunnyside, and when it was served I would chop the eggs all up with my fork and mix them into the potatoes and gravy. Another thing I used to always order in the upstate NY diners was Italian toast. You can't get good Italian bread here. I love the old fashioned bread such as DiOrio's or Ferlo's, with the hard crust, toasted and slathered with lots of real butter. (Hmmm. I wonder if that is why my lipids were so damned high back then,haha)

When Kathy is not able to bake the biscuits, I run through the drive-thru at Bojangles Chicken. They bake fresh biscuits all day long, and they are to die for. Kathy makes a good buttermilk biscuit. I never realized it until recently, but there is a buttermilk powder that many of my Southern friends use in their pancakes, biscuits and cornbread. They say you can't tell the difference between the powdered mix and real buttermilk when used in baking. Do the fast food joints up there sell breakfast biscuits or just muffins? Heck they all serve breakfast biscuits, biscuits and gravy, and biscuits as a bread choice in most sit down restaurants around here.

[clarencebunsen]

I thought buttermilk powder had been a staple in our house forever but I just looked at the can in our refrigerator and then at their website ( www.sacofoods.com ) and learned that it was developed in 1985. Anyway, I found the company and family history on the site interesting.

[Clipper]

Thanks for the link Clarence. After reading about their product I will be buying some on my next trip to the store.

Kit, Kathy and I had waffles for breakfast this morning. She had hers with apple butter made by a local church group, and some butter. I tried your recipe and made some sausage gravy using the spicy variety of Jimmy Dean's breakfast sausage, added the thyme and sage ( skipped the garlic), fried two eggs sunnyside up, and smothered the waffle and eggs with a generous amount of the sausage gravy. It was absolutely delicious, and so filling that it will probably carry straight through until supper time. I have about a 1/2 cup or so of the gravy left over. Hmmmm. I am beginning to envision mashed potatoes and sausage gravy on the horizon as a side to whatever we have for dinner tonight, lol.

I will have to try it with pancakes also, but it was great on a waffle.

[Deleted]

I never could do all that in the morning. Beside's I'm retired so I can get up anytime I want; usually 10AM. In winter time I stay with oatmeal-microwaved. Once in a while Italian bread toast with garlic butter. Although in the past month something is not right with me and I am worried I could be diabetic. Unless it is my medications for blood pressure you might know that I just get a new cardiologist and he decides to leave Slocum and go back to Penn. Oh well another thing to worry about.

[Clipper]

My dad ate instant oatmeal every day for years. He never wanted to vary. When he lived with Kathy and I he got Quaker old fashioned style oatmeal every morning. The first thing Kathy did every morning was to make dad's oatmeal, and then she would put it in a double boiler and keep it warm until he got up.

[kit]

Instant oatmeal isn't for me. It was tough enough for me to downgrade from real oats that took a while to cook, to the pre-cooked variety that only takes 1 minute. I refuse to downgrade further to the instant microwave variety. By the time it gets reduced to that point, it may look like oatmeal but there aren't any nutrients left, and the texture isn't the same.

It's the same with the pre-cooked meals in the frozen foods department. What you think is a wholesome meal is really compacted and formed floor-sweepings, artificial flavors, fillers, chemicals and lots of salt as a flavor enhancer. I've tried a few of the 'better' brand names and was disappointed every time. Reading the Ingredients on the label tells me why. So, for me, homemade is best.

[Clipper]

I did buy a box of the instant oatmeal in envelopes when I was going to stay in the trailer and run back and forth to the hospital. I ate it for a quick breakfast on only a couple of occasions when I was in a hurry to get to the hospital to visit Kathy, and SHE had me bring her a couple of packets to eat when the hospital breakfast was inedible.

The food at OUR hospital here in Bristol is outstanding. So much so that some seniors actually go there simply to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The food at Wake Forest North Carolina Baptist Medical Center is actually quite horrid. Kathy quite often had me bring her something from the outside because her tray arrived with an unappetizing conglomeration of overcooked and cold food. Disgusting stuff, lol. It is pretty bad when one PREFERS instant oatmeal over the oatmeal or other breakfast items served on a tray. The food was ALWAYS stone cold before it got to her, and the quality was less than stellar.

Kathy actually had old fashioned style oatmeal this very morning, with brown sugar and half and half on it. I am not that big of an oatmeal fan. I had a couple of poached eggs on toast and a sausage patty.

[kit]

Clipper,

Sounds like both you and Kathy did okay in the breakfast department yesterday morning. Good wholesome real oatmeal, half-and-half, eggs, sausage patty... it all sounds good to me. The only food groups not represented are pizza and hot fudge ;o)

I've decided that I prefer fried eggs on pancakes with (believe it or not) salt, pepper and maple syrup. It may sound like a weird combination to many, but then, they don't have to eat it. Eggs lend themselves to either sweet or savory, but as far as the country sausage gravy goes, it's definitely savory and is really best on top of homemade biscuits or home fries with onions. Just a matter of personal taste, I guess.

Have you tried making crepes? They're outstanding for wrapping all sorts of interesting combinations of foods. They can either be made sweet or savory depending on what you plan to fill them with, and what sort of sauce you're going to pour over them. I'd be interested to hear what sort of experiments you run and what foods seem to 'click' for you with crepe wraps.

[chris]

Oh noooo I eat Quick Oats and cook it in the microwave. We have a restaurat here in Rochester called Simply Crepes (use to be Cafe le Crepe) They make total meal out of them...from an entree to dessert crepe and they are the best.

[kit]

Chris... I like to experiment with different foods, and crepes would be high on my list. Can you remember any of the combinations of foods they make at 'Simply Crepes' for entrees?

[Clipper]

I tried making crepes a couple of times over the years Kit. I was never successful in getting the batter quite right and wasn't very adept at turning them over. I usually tore them. I DO like crepes occasionally but I will leave the making to the professional cooks who are more adept producing a thin and tasty crepe. I am more the redneck pancake type, preferring a pancake the size of a hub cap off of a 58 Buick. Slather it with real butter and some maple syrup and I am a happy man. Slim's Diner in Boonville used to make pancakes the size of the plate they were served on. A short stack was two cakes and any more than that would have the biggest eater leaving some on the plate. Can't be eating breakfasts like that since finding that I am diabetic. Sugar free syrup sort of dampens my enthusiasm for pancakes, waffles and french toast in recent months. I try to behave so that I can control the diabetes and my blood sugar with diet and not have to get into any sort of insulin regimen or anything of that nature. It has worked so far. The only sweets that I actually miss are donuts and ice cream. I actually went all summer long without so much as a lick of ice cream. It was only tough when I hit the Dairy Queen drive-thru for Kathy to get a chocolate cone or a Blizzard.

[clarencebunsen]

Nov 14, 2014 20:42:51 GMT -5 kit said:

Chris... I like to experiment with different foods, and crepes would be high on my list. Can you remember any of the combinations of foods they make at 'Simply Crepes' for entrees?

Kit, I have not been to Simply Crepes but on our last trip to Myrtle Beach our daughter took us to a place called Crepe Creations which seems to be a similar concept. You can see their menu at this link

www.crepecreation.com/index.html

Since we went at lunch time I had a savory crepe which I liked. However I think I would have made one change to their recipe. I believe they used the same batter for their sweet and savory crepes. To my taste that didn't quite match. It might take a little experimentation but I think a crepe with Greek or Italian herbs and spices would go better with a savory filling.