Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

I had one accomplishment yesterday, and it was this:

Holy. Shit. Dinner.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy.

Yinz, I fucking love biscuits and sausage gravy.  It is the best.  The trouble is, I live in a northern country, and biscuits are hard to come by.  Generally, they come out of fast food drive thru windows or Pillsbury's tubes, full of trans fats and other unsavory elements, the processed chemical shit storm of modern food science compressed into a little roll.  Gross.

The trouble is, I can't bake.  I think this blog and my other social media makes it clear that I like to cook, and I'm even good at it.  But baking?  Nyet.  For years I could bake one thing -- chocolate chip cookies -- and frankly, that did me.  I think I've mentioned my baking fails before here, actually.  

But the biscuits.  I needed biscuits!

I take no credit for the recipe.  You can find it here, on Friend Mark T's blog.  The thing is, even with this recipe, it took me half a dozen batches of biscuits to arrive at really good biscuits.  The first batch was literally inedible.  You'd think it wouldn't be so hard to follow the fucking directions, but you know, there it is -- I really can't bake.  But still, with every batch I made progress, thanks to Mark's help.  I'd send him some biscuit-related text message that ended in ":(" and he'd provide advice and comfort.  

So now I can bake two things.  I think that'll do me.

The last step was the sausage gravy, which turned out to be super simple.  I think the key is quality ingredients.  I got Parma sausage and Snowville Creamery whole milk -- don't skimp on this stuff, cause there's practically nothing in the recipe, and if you get some shitty Bob Evans sausage or whatever, you'll be able to tell.

Here's how you make an absolute shit-ton of sausage gravy.

1 lb of bulk sausage -- I favor Parma, but wherever you get it, make sure it's good quality and fresh.  (Probably you're supposed to use breakfast sausage, but I actually used mild Italian. Shrug.)

3 Tbl of butter

1/2 c of flour

5 cups of whole milk -- again, make sure it's good milk.  I like Snowville (it's local, non-homogonized, and from pasture-fed cows).

Brown the sausage in a skillet until it's cooked through and crumbly.  Set aside.

Over medium-low heat, add the butter and then whisk in the flour.  Let this roux cook until the butter-flour mix has turned a darker shade of gold.  Turn the heat to low, and then slowly pour in the milk, whisking all the time.  Once the roux has dissolved, you can turn the heat back up a little.  Add the sausage back in, stir, and allow to simmer gently, until the milk is thick like gravy.  

Voila, sausage gravy.  A crap load of it: like, enough for six people.  Or less people with lots of leftovers.  Pour it over Mark's biscuits.  (Leftover-wise, the gravy reheated just fine in the microwave the next day.  The biscuits I'd recommend popping into the [toaster] oven to reheat, so they don't get mushy.)

Oh, and if you're curious, the salad was some local cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and red onion, mixed up with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.  Because, you know, health.  Health with your biscuits and sausage gravy.  Ahem.

I am way too proud of myself over these biscuits.

Ethiopian Cooking and Popery

Today was another food-centric day.  To start with, I got a text from my mother late this morning: she was  at the Mills mall, and asked me to meet her for lunch in Aspinwall at Patron.  So basically the day started out with delicious chicken fajitas.

Then I came home and got dinner started.  I had a meeting to attend at my church tonight (I got talked into being on the Parish Life committee -- I don't know about you, but when a priest asks me to do something, I usually end up doing it), so I decided to pre-prepare dinner, so it could just be heated up when I finally got home.

Ted and I enjoy dinner at Abay, one of the Ethiopian restaurants in East Liberty, and so, just as I decided it was time to learn how to make homemade Thai, I've decided it's time to learn how to make Ethiopian at home.  Plus, I had some beets and potatoes from last week's farmers' market languishing in my veggie drawer.

Local beets and potatoes. And look at my adorable wee Japanese ginger grater!

The first hurdle I encountered is that there seem to be fewer resources on the internet for Ethiopian recipes than for Thai.  The second hurdle is that there seem to be 1,000,000 variations on berbere, which is a spice mixture that makes up a key component of a lot of Ethiopian cooking, specifically wats.  Finally, I couldn't crush my fenugreek seeds, because they were as hard as tiny bits of gravel.  So there were roadblocks.

I decided to make tikil gomen, a cabbage, potato, and (oftentimes) carrot dish; kay sir dinich, which is beets and potatoes, and which as far as I know is exclusive to Abay's menu; and doro wat, chicken stewed in berbere.  The tikil gomen and kay sir dinich were pretty simple: it seems much Ethiopian cooking starts with a base of onions, garlic, and ginger, cooked in a spiced clarified butter called niter kibbeh.  I confess I didn't undertake this, and just sauteed the aromatics in plain old butter, but maybe in the future I'll undertake this African version of ghee.

I used epicurious.com's berbere recipe, though I cut back on the paprika and chile, and substituted ancho for New Mexico chiles -- and, as I said, I didn't have ground fenugreek.  I sauteed onion, garlic, and ginger in butter, and added four chicken thighs and about two tablespoons of the berbere mix, and a few cups of filtered water, and let it simmer forever.  It turned out perfectly tasty, but it didn't taste Ethiopian.  I plan to try a different berbere recipe in the future.  The vegetables were simpler; I sauteed onion, garlic, and ginger in butter again, threw in potatoes, carrots, and cabbages, several cups of filtered water, about a half teaspoon of turmeric and a teaspoon of cumin, plus a pinch of salt and black pepper.  This tasted most successfully like the tikil gomen I'd had at Abay.  The kay sir dinich was onions, garlic, ginger, butter, chopped beets, potatoes, and a pinch of salt, boiled down until everything was tender, and it tasted pretty much like the restaurant version as well.  I'd say the main sticking point is the berbere.

And the injera.  Ethiopian food is served with a spongey flatbread -- more like a pancake, really -- made out of fermented teff.  Trying to make it seemed like more of an undertaking than I was ready for, so on my way home from my meeting I stopped at Abay and bought two injeras for $3.21.  It helped make things seem more authentic.

I can't take credit for the pancake.

So, in summary, I don't have any recipes down, but it wasn't a disaster, and I have something to build on.

Oh, and if you're curious about the church meeting, we're putting together a youth group program for the parish's teens.  Being Catholic is odd, I know.  I was raised Presbyterian and converted to Catholicism when I was 22.  I preferred it as a practice, and I chiefly see religion as a matter of practice.  I can't tell you whether or not God exists -- I've never talked to Him, anyway.  But I do know that it's good for me to have a spiritual practice and moral reference, and so when I found Catholicism to be more satisfying in this regard -- I enjoy the ritual, the solemnity, the historical reliance, and the universality of the Church -- I converted.  (I didn't feel I wanted to stray too far from the religion I was culturally accustomed to.)

The trouble, of course, is that I'm very liberal.  And, frankly, I think the Church -- the papacy in Rome, the American Council of Catholic Bishops, etc. -- is frequently despicable and loathsome, in its treatment of women, the LGBTQ community, its refusal to embrace contraception in AIDS-ravaged communities, and so forth.  But I regard my relationship with the Catholic Church the way I regard my relationship with the United States of America, which is also frequently despicable and loathsome; I might be a Catholic and I might be an American, but I'm not necessarily responsible when either of these bodies do despicable and loathsome things.  And I have as much right to this Church and this country as do the people who move them to be despicable and loathsome -- moreso, in fact.  So it's my job to be a good Catholic and a good American, and try to push these bodies in better directions, or at the very least, it's my right to say that I, a good person, represent these bodies, and so they should be judged according to my beliefs and behaviors as much as according to those of the despicable, loathsome types.

But this seldom comes up for me in church on a day-to-day basis, because I belong to a very liberal parish -- I sometimes think, being in the ghetto, the diocese just kind of ignores us -- and my priest is The Awesomest.  He is good and kind and holy and there is a rainbow flag in the parish office.  So.

Fried Rice, TV, "Spring Leaf", and a Nap Party

I didn't blog yesterday.  I felt like absolute hell and accomplished precisely nothing, so at least you didn't miss anything.  I haven't been hungover twice in one week in probably years, but there we were yesterday.  I don't think it's bad -- getting drunk and screwing is probably the appropriate way to celebrate one's anniversary -- I just didn't have the ability to like, do stuff.  Like type.  For what it's worth, when I went to pick up my laptop today, I discovered a cat had puked on it.

The fact that I accomplished nothing yesterday didn't mean that nobody did; my mother came to visit and painted my bathroom.  She repainted all the rooms in her house a few years ago and now considers herself a pro -- who am I to argue?  We went with Glidden's "Spring Leaf".  I tried to take a picture, but my phone's camera couldn't get the color right, so here's a link to "Spring Leaf".  Imagine it in a very tiny bathroom.

Today I got up and cleaned up last night's dishes and made myself fried rice with some leftover brown rice that was in the fridge.  It turned out fine but not right.  I think maybe brown rice isn't the best for frying.  And man, did shit get stuck on to that skillet.  I don't look forward to washing that at all.

I would call today's lunch "adequate". At least the rice got used.

It's not entirely true that I did nothing yesterday -- I did finish the last 30 pages of Crime and Punishment.  I hope to write a lengthier blog on it tomorrow, which I'll post to my other blog, which I share with Friend Sarah, where I put real things that aren't me rambling about what I had for lunch.  I asked and was welcomed to submit a blog to @yinzrreadin's website wherein I will discuss children's books that particularly affected me.  I intend to talk about the moments in my young life in which books helped me to learn that the world was unfair and people were basically cruel and selfish.  So tomorrow should be a fun day of blogging!  Crime, punishment, cruelty, despair ...

Yesterday I also finished watching The Tudors, which I've been watching on Netflix over the last several months.  I liked the show a great deal and would really recommend it, though bear in mind that it's completely up my alley to begin with: there are period sets and costumes, accents, unnecessarily complex political machinations, and wildly inaccurate history, which are all things I love. I started watching Borgia today as a replacement, and though it has all of the above mentioned traits as well, it didn't grab me the way The Tudors did.  Still, I'm only one episode in, so I'll give it a few more to see if it gets better.  Also on my "to watch" list is Downton Abbey.  Why people pay fifty-some bucks a month for cable when you can spend $8 a month for Netflix Instant Streaming I'll never understand.

Today I'm going to meet Friend Gerry for a beer at Sharp Edge's happy hour, and then I'm heading Downtown for an hour or so to an event Friend Katie is hosting on behalf of the Cultural Trust.  That's a little more yuppie networking than I usually roll, but I hear there will be free booze and snacks.  I'm gonna wear a pair of shoes that aren't flip flops or Chucks, so as to better blend in.  Five bucks and a slice of cake says I'm the fattest person there -- good thing I'm down with my #obeselifestyle.  Or should I say ... oBEST??

Today I plan to start A River Runs Through It, lent to me by Friend Mark J. and next on my Summer Reading List.  My little bookworm bookmark is already under the cover, ready to go.  I also have to hit the pharmacy on the way to happy hour -- guess who's thyroid died a little more, so her synthroid dose was too low.  Come on, guess.

Oh, and in kitty news, poor wee Chief is all snorfly -- he seems to have caught a wee cold.  Chief has a herpes-like virus shacked up in his upper respiratory system.  There's nothing to be done for it, and it's not uncommon in cats with dicey pasts (other cats get it in their eyes, and some unfortunate kitties get it in their lower respiratory systems -- my mom has one such).  It flairs up when he's stressed out or when his immune system is low for other reasons.  The prescription is usually Extra Love, which Chief exploits wildly, unless things get too bad and a secondary bacterial infection moves in; then the prescription is Extra Love and antibiotics.  My poor buddy -- he's had the worst week!  I'm still really thankful, though, that his neurological symptoms turned out to be something that wasn't life threatening.  It'll be Extra Love and snorfles for many more years for Chief, God willing.

NAP PARTY. Clockwise from left: Chief, George, Skyler, Matilda.  Poor Floyd is never invited. :(

Don't think Floyd doesn't get naps in, though.

Fresh Herbs and Wee Chief

I think I'll blog early today, as I'm going out late tonight.  The Event I thought was this afternoon is next Thursday, turns out -- good thing I checked.

Today I went to the grocery store, and there bought a box of basil, so I spent some time with my food processor when I got home.  As Friend @javelinwarrior has lamented with me lately, basil never keeps, so I thought it best to use it at once.  First I made some green curry paste.  In the past, I've used lemon peel instead of lemongrass in my homemade curries, because lemongrass isn't very conveniently obtained.  But lately the Whole Foods has been keeping it regularly in stock, so I thought I'd give it a crack this time.  I made a paste out of a small white onion, several square inches of ginger, several garlic cloves, a lemongrass stalk, about a third of the box of basil, a good handful of cilantro, and the rind and juice of a lime -- kaffir lime leaves are still hard to come by.  It's in the fridge, awaiting use.  Nota bene: I kept the top of the lemongrass stick, as it can be used to flavor the curry additionally as it cooks, like a bay leaf.

Green Curry Making

After that I rinsed out the food processor and turned the rest of the basil into pesto, with garlic cloves, parmesan, olive oil, and walnuts instead of pine nuts because pine nuts cost a fortune.  That's chilling in the fridge now too.  Both pastes I pressed down and covered with plastic wrap before I put the lid on the little Pyrex container, to keep the air off them so they won't turn brown.

Pesto

Warm weather and fresh herbs just seem to go together.

After this project and lunch, I watched The Hulk, which I hadn't seen before.  I liked it, I think more than I liked any of the other Avengers movies, except for Iron Man, which is just ridiculously kickass. I think I mostly liked the hulk because of Edward Norton, who is The Dreamiest.  Seriously.  If Ted ever leaves me, I will accept no replacement but Edward Norton. The whole thing made me want to watch Fight Club again soon.

After that it was book readin' -- Crime and Punishment is still happening to me.

I think I'll take this opportunity to tell you about wee Chief, since he's going to the doctor early tomorrow morning.  Chief is one of my kitty cats; we have five cats, because although I hate kids and never want to have them, I do like having a big happy family.  Chief came to us five years ago, when we moved into an apartment in Wilkinsburg.  My friend Carrie was moving out the of the apartment, and we were taking her place with roommate Friend Roger.  A girl Carrie knew had dumped a cat named Lucca on her, but Carrie didn't want it, so we agreed to take up his care.  (At this point we had two other cats, George and Skyler, a brother and sister born in my mom's backyard a couple of years previous to this.)

A nervous-looking Chief, back in the Wilkinsburg days.

Lucca was cool with Roger, but he was mortally terrified of us -- and everyone and everything else.  I don't think he'd been well-cared for before he got dumped on Carrie; he was constantly panicked, and when you fed him, he ate like he'd never eaten before, sucking down the food so fast you could literally hear him choking on it.  He barely slept -- that's saying something, for a cat.  The slightest thing woke him, and he'd dart away in fear.

It was a long process of him first being comfortable in the same room with us (but on the far side of the room), then a little nearer to us ... he was as shocked as we were when, after a few months, he jumped on to our bed.  Along the way he got a new name when we were watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest one night, and we started calling him Chief because he needed a new name, anyway -- who names a cat Lucca?

Chief cuddling Matilda when she was a wee kitten.  They're good friends.

Point is it took a long time with Chief.  But I can tell you that he is now the cuddliest thing on Earth, at least as far as Ted and I are concerned.  He sleeps with us at night -- he likes for me to spoon him.  His favorite thing is to be between us, so he can put his back against me and his paws on Ted, while I hold his tummy.  If we won't make room between us for him, he pulls our hair until we do.

He's a weird little guy in a lot of ways.  He's very undersized for a male cat, but he's got the biggest meow, and it makes him sound like a complaining old man.  He likes to talk to his toys, little mice that he lies in bed next to and talks to for ten or twenty minutes at a time -- he's gentle with them, like they're little pets instead of toys.  He's definitely the smartest of our cats: he's taught himself to play fetch, he understands the most words and commands.  He might be a little in love with me.

I don't think anything's ever loved me the way Chief does.  Human love is complicated and hard, and often animal companion love isn't always entirely fulfilling because it's not clear the animal has the capacity to love completely.  But I know wee Chief loves me.  I love him.  He's a very good kitty.

"What? I'm shedding on Dad's dry clean-onlys.  WHAT IS YOUR POINT?"

In February, we woke up one morning and Chief could barely stand; he was weaving like a drunkard and I was practically hysterical because I was sure he had had a stroke or something similarly awful, and was dying.  We hurried him in to the vet.  She diagnosed him with an inner ear infection.  The pills made his symptoms go away, and for a few days after the pills ran out, he was fine.  We left one morning to visit Ted's parents in Cleveland, and when we got home, he was again barely able to stand he was so dizzy, his little eyes darting back and forth as he miserably clung to the bed.  More pills -- perhaps a very recalcitrant infection?  But this time it was clear that there was something more wrong.  The pills made him OK, but his head tilt and his wobbliness didn't quite clear up.

So now tomorrow morning he's going to a kitty neurologist.  Our regular vet says she suspects that he might have an inner ear polyp that's affecting his balance and causing his neurological-looking symptoms.  Hopefully this is so.  It will be expensive to remove, but once removed he'll be perfectly fine and back to normal.  But of course, one can't help but imagine the worst.  (Never mind how we're going to pay for this -- seriously, I have no idea.  Well, I do have an idea, the idea is credit.  Let me tell you sometime how much debt Ted and I are already in.)

So, anyway, that's the situation going in to tomorrow morning.  God willing, everything will turn out for the best.  Think on wee Chief fondly tonight and tomorrow for me.

Chief cuddling Matilda now that she has much outgrown him. Cuddling is a theme with Chief.