Gravy and biscuits
Suzie-Q had an early morning medical test. She was not allowed to eat or drink anything since the evening before robbing her of her usually warm morning disposition. When the test finished, I took her to breakfast. I sat there at the table sipping my coffee pondering the plate filled with food the waitress sat in front of me. Over easy eggs, home fries, sausage links, gravy and biscuits. I would need to research to be certain, but I believe there is a law here in Wild and Wonderful declaring if it does not include gravy and biscuits it is not breakfast. I believe the same law also bans granola from all points west of the eastern panhandle. If not, it should.
I put some butter and apple butter on the biscuits then covered them with gravy. Then I covered the home fries with gravy. Since there was still some gravy in the bowel, I covered my gravy with some more gravy. I winced a little when Suzie-Q squirted ketchup on the plate beside her hash browns confounded about where she might have picked up such a horrid habit.
Any of those things sitting alone on the plate would not be a very good breakfast, but when combined brother, you have to mainline the lard straight into your arteries to beat it.
Fried bologna (baloney here) is also a staple. At one popular eating place you can get fried baloney sandwiches. The menu fittingly calls it “The Politician.”
For the first time, probably in our state’s history, we have a Republican controlled state congress. We are becoming a right to work state in a place with a history of gunfights erupting for crossing union picket lines. Common core is being blown up. As of this week, anyone one 21 years of age or older may carry a concealed handgun without a permit. We have always been an open carry state, but some people get a little nervous around exposed side arms. There is some concern, but when you get right down to it the bad people have always illegally carried concealed handguns. Now, they may just think twice. And, if I only want to carry inside the state I do not have to pay the permit fee (tax) to exercise a constitutional right. I will continue to pay the permit fee so that I can carry in reciprocal states.
It does not surprise me that the Republican establishment, led by former presidential election losers, is plotting to take the political party’s nomination away from the people’s choice. It just surprises me they are so brazen about it including the self-proclaimed political puritans who state they will not vote for the choice of the people unless it is who they prefer solidifying their place in the I am smarter than you elitist snobocracy. So they should go back to writing smug commentary in magazines that the common American does not read and talking on radio programs that most working Americans do not have time listen to.
For all I know, it is divine intervention that is awakening Americans to the antics of the typical tyrannical and corrupt Washington politician. Even more so, Americans are coming to realize that these men and women of bought and paid for political power only have interest in maintaining the status quo with an in your face approach. And they believe Americans will do as they traditionally have for decades – sit on the sidelines and watch the further destruction of our country and freedom. To their chagrin American are not sitting this one out. Instead, they are adding the final ingredient to the recipe for revolution presented to them.
Did you ever have a fried apple biscuit followed by a hot and gooey cinnamon bun? It just tops off the perfect breakfast.
© 2016 J. D. Pendry All Rights Reserved
Category: Politics
Made me hungry JD. We’ll be back in WV about this time next month and I know what I’ll be having for breakfast.
SW Florida ain’t bad, mind you, but not much GRAVY unless it’s hispanic.
Then you’re not going to the right places to eat, Zero.
There are indeed restaurants and diners in SW FL that do biscuits and gravy right. But you’ll have to get a bit off the beaten track (and away from “snowbird alley”) to find them.
And no, I’m not talking Cracker Barrel or Country Kitchen, either.
Country Kitchen circa 1972, I had been home a couple of months. Me and the OB (Ol’ Blister), then girl friend, were having coffee at the CK. She blurts out “are you gonna marry me or what?”
Well I had a 50/50 shot at getting it right, but here I am 43 years, this month, later.
Best sausage gravy and biscuits I ever had comes from Norm’s Diner on Bridge St in Groton, CT. Comes straight from the Navy recipe, as you might expect from a Navy town.
Now I’m hungry thinking about it. 🙁
I rant, I rave and I make an ass out of myself on a regular basis.
That is all driven by the understanding that if decent folk don’t get off their asses and commit to more than just whining about the tyrants and destructionists, it’ll be left up to the below illustrated types to do so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGvhOEp3HwQ
And, both what’s happening now, and what happens after, will all be our fault for not standing up when it counted.
I suspect (hope?) that may be exactly what is happening.
Now, I’m a great follower of biscuits & gravy. Love it to pieces.
Having said that, there’s a great little diner up here that makes a pancake the size of a dinner plate. It’s about an inch thick. I get one and have them put a pair of eggs fried over easy on top. Add some butter, syrup, and a sprinkle of salt on the eggs, add a side of bacon and it’s wicked good. Pair it with a bottomless cup of black coffee and it’s a winnah!
Believe I’ve been there, AW1 T. Mom&Pops place near Brunswick, with pancakes the size of Frisbees? Was on a sonobuoy test there when BNAS was still alive, the team went there for breakfast. I watched in awe as a young engineer ate a double stack of those gi-normous pancakes.
He was pretty much useless for the rest of the day. Good times!
My mom made the most awesome biscuits and gravy on the planet! Man, I miss it.
I am a son of the South. I grew up on white gravy over homemade biscuits or toast. We called it ‘white sop’ and was a Southern breakfast staple. With or without pieces of sausage, it was good stuff.
‘Did you ever have a fried apple biscuit followed by a hot and gooey cinnamon bun?’
Oh, now I have to find out how to do the fried apple biscuit. The hot and gooey is easy enough, but I’m taking that a step further and putting chopped nuts in the filling and the chopped nuts plus the gooey in the bottom of each bun cup in the baking tin. Lots of nuts. LOTS of nuts.
And while we’re at it, regardless of who actually gets the nomination, in this very fractious and idiotic election year, voting a straight GOPer part line is an uncommonly good idea. There is NO perfect candidate.
In all sincerity, it may just be time to revive the Whigs. Look ’em up.
Do not despair, however. We still have sausage biscuits and gravy at the restaurant out on the highway. Truckers stop there for a reason, and so do I.
Go where the truckers and cops eat- you won’t go wrong.
Unless the place is named “Mom’s.”
Never play cards with a man named “Doc.”
Never drink anything that is on fire.
And never ever eat at a joint named “Mom’s.”
The three have served me well for the last 58 laps around the sun. I expect little change in future orbits. YMMV.
Just a factoid. When you see a herd of trucks parked around a restaurant, this does not mean the chow might be good, it may mean that here is a place with room for trucks to park.
Think it was “William Least Heat Moon in his immortal “Blue Highways” who rated diners based on the number of calendars on the wall.
One was a place to avoid, two might have decent specialties, three was great, four was heaven, and five calendar places were only rumors. Think Steinbeck may have said something in :Travels with Charley ” but can’t remember…must be time to re-read.
I ate at an actual truck stop dinner in Mountain Home Idaho once. On the menu was steak and eggs. So, since I had a long drive ahead of me (I was moving to Seattle at the time) I decided to order it.
The waitress looked at me and said, “Ya’ll must be hungry.”
I shit you not, the steak had it’s own plate because it was as big as the plate. The other plate was piled high with eggs, toast, hash browns and biscuits.
One of the best damn steaks I ever had.
If you’re gonna eat at a chain truck stop, Petro is the one to eat at while the TA restaurants use microwaved and powdered stuff. Often the more the word “Country” is used in a chain restaurant, the more powdered, pre-measured and pre-processed it is.
Creamed chipped beef with gravy over toast*, with a couple over-easy fried eggs on top, and coffee. Breakfast of champions!
*SOS, its a classic.
To each his own. In my book, it’s far better over biscuits – and the eggs scrambled.
There are breakfasts that are equally as good. But I don’t think I’ve ever found one that’s clearly better.
Ate my share of SOS as a kid. We didn’t have much in those days (still don’t really), so there were days when creamed chipped beef on toast (the translation of SOS is left as an exercise for the student in case anybody doesn’t know what it ‘really’ means) was also called dinner at our hovel. My dad had been a cook during WWII, so he was an expert at making this ambrosia. The parents could put this on the table for less than a dollar for the meal, which made it affordable when things were a little tight. I still love it, but my wife can’t stand it. It never appears in our house now. Every once in a while I find a place that can make it right and that’s what I order. (Liked creamed beef gravy over my scrambled eggs along with a bowl of grits and some bacon back when I got to eat in the chow hall. Fond memories.)
SOS is still my favorite breakfast dish, nothing like some good sausage gravy or chipped beef on toast or a biscuit that sticks to your ribs and helps keep you working!
SOS was some of the finest food in the chow hall. I am serious. I love that stuff.
Chipped beef in gravy on toast was a dish left over from WWII when rationing meant you made do with what you could get with your rationing coupons. Yes, there was a black market, but rationing was in vogue.
It is one of the few dishes my mom could fix in 1952 for about $1.00 total, took 15 minutes at most, and was filling and good on a cold winter night. Add some veggies to it and a salad, and maybe dessert.
You can still get those glass jars of chipped beef at the grocery store if you look for them, and you can still get SPAM, in various flavors and even a low-salt version now. Spam hash is good, quick and filling.
It has been a multi-generational quest to discover the many ways that biscuits and gravy can be prepared, and to determine what regional variations exist.
Preliminary results are inconclusive. Reckon we could get a grant to continue the research?
Sign me up.
I feel deprived reading all the glowing reports of hearty b’fasts here. My mom was a good cook, but never had the opportunity to stretch her skills due to the finicky eating habits of my dad.
Fortunately, I married a good woman who is an EXCELLENT cook. But since I always get up and out the door before she awakes (one of the perks of being 60+ semi-retired), I make my own b’fast.
BUT, in her defense, she ALWAYS make an EXCELLENT dinner. With leftovers enough for a great lunch.
Anyway, you’re eating it wrong, just like that commercial on one of the foody channels says.
You put your fried eggs (they’re supposed to come in pairs, you know) on top of the tatters and then chop it up and mix it in with ’em.
Then you’re supposed to tobasco the resulting pile.
*Then* you apply the gravy.
Side topic:
I was watching some youtubage on burgers and old school BBQ in the UK. It’s getting harder and harder to feel proper levels of sorryfulness for them what were born in a state of lesser than American when they’re adopting so many of our more tasty ways.
On the other hand, the pace of cultural conquest has not slackened a bit, has it 🙂
J D P…..This another of the common man, but this one listens to talk radio and reads…..your ramblings included. Nope, I don’t believe everything I read, but even moreso do NOT believe every Paid For By Sponsor commercial or position conveyed. We may as well face it, the Dumbing Down of America has been a HUGE success. Those of us still able to reach our own conclusions and form logical opinions are fewer today than ever, and are beginning to become extinct. Read the posts on this site every day and realize most all of us (excluding the exposed POSERS)still think and remarkably share many of the same points of view. Trouble is, what the hell do we know? After all, most of us served and made sacrifices while the non-thinking sheep stayed home and know more than all od us combined. If I had to do it all over again, I’d still take what I always thought and considered to be the right path. Regardless as to what happens from this point on, at least we gave it our best shot and harbor no regrets.