Good morning & Merry Christmas. I went to bed last night cooking my rear off in order to feed everyone last night and also make sure everyone is fed today. The one advantage is that I didn’t have time to watch too much TV and get all ‘festive’ meaning that today’s headache is fully related to sleep deprivation. Before I go on, I just want to be clear, I AM NOT ALONE! My wife is also cooking her ass off as well, there’s just a shitload to be done. So, if you happen to be a husband reading this and you’ve spent your morning playing vintage NES. You need to get off your ass and fucking help. This shit is hard.

To start off my day, after opening 3 bottles of whiskeys that etiquette suggests I can’t drink for some 12 hours  yet, I launched into breakfast mode. With egg and dairy allergies, my go-to egg mash-up is completely off the table. What wasn’t off the table is biscuits and gravy. So, what’s the status of that? Well, the biscuits weren’t quite right for this and the sausage gravy is basically perfect.

For your biscuits, use literally anything. I used the royal baking company’s oatmeal biscuits. these are sweet and would work well in something like a strawberry shortcake, but they did make for a nice contrast in this one.

• 1 1/4 C. flour
• 1/2 Tsp Royal Baking Company Baking Powder*
• 1/2 Tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 C. water
• 6Tbsp shortening
• 1 1/3 C. Cooked oatmeal (steel cut or something – NOT instant!)

I used egg substitute, which generally works fine for baking. Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients then mix them together. If by some miracle, you manage to get a dry enough dough to roll out and cut, do that. Otherwise, pour into a clean, well seasoned, and well oiled cast iron skillet. Put into the oven for ~30-35 min at 350. Even when the fork comes out basically dry, it’s going to come out of the oven pretty soggy, it’s largely due to the moisture content of the oats, it should be fine, if a bit thick.

For the sausage gravy:

• 1 Lb breakfast sausage
• 1/3 C. flour
• Lots of milk (I used Almond/Cashew)
• Pepper to taste – Use a lot, like a whole Tsp, probably.

Brown the sausage and slowly add in the flour while stirring the browned sausage. Once all of the flour is coating the sausage, start pouring in milk at about 1/2 C. at a time, allow it to thicken and add more until you have a nice thick gravy. Add your pepper and maybe a hint of salt. If you add too much milk, let it cook a bit, it should thicken, if not sprinkle just a bit more flour on.

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* To make Royal baking powder sift together 2T Cream of tartar, 1T cornstarch & 1T baking soda. This is a baking powder without the aluminum phosphate and can be used on a lot of vintage recipes.