Greyhouse Journal: Biscuits and Gravy Post

Memory Mondays

St. Pat's Day got me thinking as I said in an earlier post) about my family. While searching for a quote to send a friend, I ran across one in Robert Fulghum's book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It immediately made me think of my father. It's at the end of this post.

In the last years of his life, my dad re-discovered Biscuits and Gravy for breakfast. This was a horrifying discovery for me since my parents' home had become a combo of "Heart Attack Hotel" and "Stroke City". What was scarier, was that my mother was enabling him!

She had figured out how to whip up a batch of Sausage Gravy, putting it into recycled margarine containers from her friend Irene (my mom never used margarine after her experience with oleo). Then she'd mix up dough for biscuits, bake them, cool completely and bag them. Everything was then frozen.

This way she could thaw a tub of gravy overnight, the next morning, heat it and pop a few biscuits into the toaster oven. Within minutes she had dad's breakfast. He always looked so delighted when he dove in. His eyes twinkled and when finished, he'd smack his lips and smile. The perfect picture of pure happiness.

As time went on, this became his (gasp!) daily breakfast after he went to George Webb's to see his "friends" for a cup of coffee. On weekends, of course, it was real eggs, bacon and butter. Eggbeaters never entered the picture, much less the house.

Recent posts on food networks seem to be featuring more and more comfort foods, among them recipes for Biscuits and Gravy. In looking up the nutritional (ha!) information for these heavenly little pillows of poison, I came across www.livestrong.com, a partner of the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the following statistics.
"One 2 1/2 inch diameter biscuit has 212 calories, according to the FatSecret website. An oz., or 2 tbsp. of sausage gravy has 44 calories, you'll take in 256 in calories."

Frankly this sounded a bit low to me, so over at the www.fatsecret.com site I found that one biscuit with gravy equalled 508 calories. I won't even tell you the breakdown of saturated fat and so on. At www.allrecipes.com, I found one serving dished up 710 calories, so there's a lot of variation.

Now, if you'd seen my father's version, it would have scared you silly. At least two if not three biscuits topped with about 3/4 cup of sausage gravy. Yes, you may faint right now. My arteries are snapping shut right now just recalling this!

Since I've never had a taste of this dish or would ever make a batch, I'm using a photo from www.tasteofhome.com so you can see what I'm referring to.