First Annual Traditional Family Thanksgiving Breakfast of Sausage Gravy and Biscuits

You don't need a reason to ride motorcycles around the countryside, but sometimes it's nice to have a quest, and one of ours (the buddies from my other blog and I) is to find the best sausage gravy and biscuits east of the Mississippi.  So far, the title goes to the Moose Lodge in Richwood, West Virginia ("You don't need to be member.").  Up until today, that is.

The other day, I got it into my head that I should try my own SG&B, and yesterday I realized that while we have a traditional family Christmas breakfast (creamed dried beef on biscuits), we don't have a traditional family Thanksgiving breakfast.  Up until today, that is.

From a Google search, the basic recipe is ridiculously simple and easy and just what you would expect it to be:  brown the loose sausage in a skillet, use 2-3 tablespoons of flour to whisk the drippings into a rue, add milk, cook to thicken, season with salt and plenty of black pepper (sans sausage, it is called black pepper gravy, after all).  Of course, in a garlic/chocolate universe there is only one thing to do.  And really, doesn't all good cooking start with "chop an onion and mince two cloves of garlic..."?

So, half a pound of Hatfield Pennsylvania Dutch sausage stripped from the casing, half a small onion, chopped fine, and two cloves of garlic, minced, into the skillet.  I also added half of a dried red pepperocini from the garden chopped to fine flakes for a little heat (optional, especially if you are planning to add a lot of black pepper and/or are not fond of picante).  By taste, I added some sage and a little thyme (dried) all of which smelled really good as the sausage browned.

Hatfield advertises this sausage as "reduced fat" and I actually has to add a little butter to the skillet in order to make the rue.  Flour and milk added by guess (gotta have gravy sense), then salt to taste and lots of fresh ground black pepper.

You could, of course, work up Grandma's famous buttermilk biscuits to make it really special, if you had a Grandma who had a buttermilk biscuit recipe which was famous.  Lacking same, we did not obsess over the biscuits, just Bisquick using the recipe from the box, but they came out fine.  We served up the SG&B Jo style:  with a poach egg dropped on top.  I ain't gonna lie, it was extrageniferous and more than enough to hold us 'til mid afternoon TG dinner.

A new family Thanksgiving tradition is born...