I'll go for two pages out of three . . . .
EDIT: D'oh!! Two out of *four*!!
Vany -- Nyah, nyah!! :P
ROAD TRIP/ROOM PARTYHour and 15ish minutes? That's not appreciably different than the drive time between Gran and I. One of these days I'm going to accidentally stay in the hotel Gran works at and neither of us will realize it. Then he'll complain about me on here because I'll fail to get out of the pool at closing time.Game Hamster --
Paris, TN?!
Well, you're a bit of a loon for coming here willingly (half-joking, there -- XD), but you aren't *too* far from my stomping grounds. Someday maybe we can meet up in Jackson to hang out!
And no, surprisingly, I've never chaperoned Freehold.
Are you implying that you want to?
Edit: I've laid a very cleverly crafted disrobing trap... now, let us see who falls in...
I would never...oh...well...um...well look at that.
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Two! I got two!
and one went in willingly!
CY is going to be going all over the world fixing up our dwellings.
Not here. The flight fare would kill any chances of it being cost saving for me.
(1) It is truly depressing how hard it is to find decent biscuits and gravy. The fact that they're essentially a way to use up leftovers means they should be cheap and easy. Yet there are very few restaurants that make even edible biscuits and gravy, much less good biscuits and gravy. It's another of those dishes I've simply given up on ordering, because I know the restaurant I'm in will screw them up. Or at least not make them even remotely close to what I'm expecting.
The potential sanitary issues with reusing leftovers and the temptation for the workers to cut the corners and creative use of leftovers to skirt safe time limits on using fresh produce might make it not a worthwhile option.
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A bit off topic but, anyone got a good ragu recipe?
Any way, at this point, I added a can of dice tomatoes, and stirred it. Add your spices, basil, oregano, bay-leaf (crushed, I also added two whole ones to the crock-pot stage later) Black pepper to taste, red pepper flakes, plenty of salt, (its hard to over salt this, so don't worry, I added at least two teaspoons, and I may need to add more later) a bit of Italian seasoning mix, savory, marjoram, celery salt. (or just chop up some celery I guess) stir and shimmer in pan.
Pull out your crock-pot, and turn on high, add some olive oil, and more garlic, then add the now shimmering sauce. Let sit for six hours.
I plan on taking out my some of my solid chunks tonight, adding a bit of their sauce to them, bringing it to a boil, adding some cream, and pouring it over some spaghetti and adding a bit of Parmesan cheese. I'll let you know how it tastes. fantastic I hope.
(1) It is truly depressing how hard it is to find decent biscuits and gravy. The fact that they're essentially a way to use up leftovers means they should be cheap and easy. Yet there are very few restaurants that make even edible biscuits and gravy, much less good biscuits and gravy. It's another of those dishes I've simply given up on ordering, because I know the restaurant I'm in will screw them up. Or at least not make them even remotely close to what I'm expecting.The potential sanitary issues with reusing leftovers and the temptation for the workers to cut the corners and creative use of leftovers to skirt safe time limits on using fresh produce might make it not a worthwhile option.
I personally have never used left-overs to make biscuits and gravy. I can see what he means though. It's essentially just a sausage gravy poured over a soft-baked scone, for those not from the US. sometimes we add scrambled eggs to it, to fill it out a bit more. (yeah I've actually thought about the best way to describe biscuits and gravy to foreigners...) you COULD just use left over sausage patties, and it'd taste just fine.
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Yeah, I used to just to pre-mix the dry ingredients (flour, spices, instant coffee for red-eye gravy) for brown gravy/sausage gravy and keep in a jar in the fridge. When it's gravy time, just brown a few tablespoons of the seasoned flour in butter, sausage drippings, or bacon drippings until good and brown (brown. not off white, not tan, not khaki, but not burned). Once browned, add in cup of milk, and stir vigorously/scrape pan until thick and delicious. Pour it over some fresh made drop biscuits (from pre-mixed flour mixture in another jar in the fridge) that you've split open, and then serve and begin eating immediately. For sausage gravy, just cook it, drain off the grease, and set aside while you work on the gravy; when the gravy is almost ready, dump the crumbled sausage back in.
I've never found any restaurant brown gravy or sausage gravy better than what my mom (via her mom) taught me to make.
Edit: Yep, goes great with soft-scrambled eggs. The only tricky part is juggling the timing so everything (biscuits, gravy, and eggs) are done, or nearly so, at the same time.
Yeah, I used to just to pre-mix the dry ingredients (flour, spices, instant coffee for red-eye gravy) for brown gravy/sausage gravy and keep in a jar in the fridge. When it's gravy time, just brown a few tablespoons of the seasoned flour in butter, sausage drippings, or bacon drippings until good and brown (brown. not off white, not tan, not khaki, but not burned). Once browned, add in cup of milk, and stir vigorously/scrape pan until thick and delicious. Pour it over some fresh made drop biscuits (from pre-mixed flour mixture in another jar in the fridge) that you've split open, and then serve and begin eating immediately. For sausage gravy, just cook it, drain off the grease, and set aside while you work on the gravy; when the gravy is almost ready, dump the crumbled sausage back in.
I've never found any restaurant brown gravy or sausage gravy better than what my mom (via her mom) taught me to make.
I prefer to cook the gravy with the sausage in the whole time. Do you add a dash of Worcestershire sauce to yours to? (not much, like I said a dash does the whole pot)
Well, let's be blunt: Water is cheaper than milk or fat. Salt is cheaper than any other seasoning.
So the restaurant biscuits tend to taste like (and probably are) Bisquik biscuits made with water and nothing else. A sad, flavorless, dense bit of starch.
Yes, the cornerstone of the dish is the gravy: A roux made of bacon or sausage drippings and flour, add seasonings, milk or cream, bits of sausage or bacon, and enjoy! Except restaurants tend to use Crisco or other cheap commercial fat, flour, artificial seasonings, and lots and lots of salt. Leading to a thick brown sauce that tastes like little more than liquid flour and salt.
So it's not that it's hard, and it's not that the leftovers are hard to come by. (If you're cooking 100 pounds of sausage a day, you HAVE sausage drippings. You just have to figure out how to catch 'em instead of letting 'em run off into the grease trap.)
It's just a LOT cheaper if you're going large-scale to use water, salt, and commercially-produced fat.
And boy, is it nasty!
I prefer to cook the gravy with the sausage in the whole time. Do you add a dash of Worcestershire sauce to yours to? (not much, like I said a dash does the whole pot)Yeah, I used to just to pre-mix the dry ingredients (flour, spices, instant coffee for red-eye gravy) for brown gravy/sausage gravy and keep in a jar in the fridge. When it's gravy time, just brown a few tablespoons of the seasoned flour in butter, sausage drippings, or bacon drippings until good and brown (brown. not off white, not tan, not khaki, but not burned). Once browned, add in cup of milk, and stir vigorously/scrape pan until thick and delicious. Pour it over some fresh made drop biscuits (from pre-mixed flour mixture in another jar in the fridge) that you've split open, and then serve and begin eating immediately. For sausage gravy, just cook it, drain off the grease, and set aside while you work on the gravy; when the gravy is almost ready, dump the crumbled sausage back in.
I've never found any restaurant brown gravy or sausage gravy better than what my mom (via her mom) taught me to make.
Nope, never Worcestershire. Used a dash of (Chinese, not Japanese) soy sauce a couple times, but then I was making brown gravy for garlic-y mashed potatoes (served with roasted pork chops).
Edit: I like red eye gravy and sausage gravy (usually fix it for the parents for breakfast on Mother's Day and Father's Day), but IMHO, neither beats brown gravy made from bacon drippings. Over fresh biscuits or mashed potatoes (or both), it's just heavenly.
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ROAD TRIP/ROOM PARTYHour and 15ish minutes? That's not appreciably different than the drive time between Gran and I. One of these days I'm going to accidentally stay in the hotel Gran works at and neither of us will realize it. Then he'll complain about me on here because I'll fail to get out of the pool at closing time.Game Hamster --
Paris, TN?!
Well, you're a bit of a loon for coming here willingly (half-joking, there -- XD), but you aren't *too* far from my stomping grounds. Someday maybe we can meet up in Jackson to hang out!
And no, surprisingly, I've never chaperoned Freehold.
Im sure you did at least once.
If not, CRASH AT NOBODYSHOME HOME WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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I'm sitting outside, on the campsite, reading an Edgar Rice Burroughs rip-off (Lotan's raising his tork with a wild cry of despair) and looking forward to some nice stout.
I am also clever enough to realise that when Americanites are talking about biscuits and gravy, they're talking about some sort of savoury scone with brown accompaniment. Yes, I certainly am.
EDIT: The story ends with the words 'Take me, Lotan'
BOWWAKKA BOWWAKKA BOWWAKKA BOW.
Yeah, I used to just to pre-mix the dry ingredients (flour, spices, instant coffee for red-eye gravy) for brown gravy/sausage gravy and keep in a jar in the fridge. When it's gravy time, just brown a few tablespoons of the seasoned flour in butter, sausage drippings, or bacon drippings until good and brown (brown. not off white, not tan, not khaki, but not burned). Once browned, add in cup of milk, and stir vigorously/scrape pan until thick and delicious. Pour it over some fresh made drop biscuits (from pre-mixed flour mixture in another jar in the fridge) that you've split open, and then serve and begin eating immediately. For sausage gravy, just cook it, drain off the grease, and set aside while you work on the gravy; when the gravy is almost ready, dump the crumbled sausage back in.
I've never found any restaurant brown gravy or sausage gravy better than what my mom (via her mom) taught me to make.
Edit: Yep, goes great with soft-scrambled eggs. The only tricky part is juggling the timing so everything (biscuits, gravy, and eggs) are done, or nearly so, at the same time.
O.o
Whut.
Well, let's be blunt: Water is cheaper than milk or fat. Salt is cheaper than any other seasoning.
So the restaurant biscuits tend to taste like (and probably are) Bisquik biscuits made with water and nothing else. A sad, flavorless, dense bit of starch.
Yes, the cornerstone of the dish is the gravy: A roux made of bacon or sausage drippings and flour, add seasonings, milk or cream, bits of sausage or bacon, and enjoy! Except restaurants tend to use Crisco or other cheap commercial fat, flour, artificial seasonings, and lots and lots of salt. Leading to a thick brown sauce that tastes like little more than liquid flour and salt.
So it's not that it's hard, and it's not that the leftovers are hard to come by. (If you're cooking 100 pounds of sausage a day, you HAVE sausage drippings. You just have to figure out how to catch 'em instead of letting 'em run off into the grease trap.)
It's just a LOT cheaper if you're going large-scale to use water, salt, and commercially-produced fat.And boy, is it nasty!
But, I like bisquik....
Well, let's be blunt: Water is cheaper than milk or fat. Salt is cheaper than any other seasoning.
So the restaurant biscuits tend to taste like (and probably are) Bisquik biscuits made with water and nothing else. A sad, flavorless, dense bit of starch.
Yes, the cornerstone of the dish is the gravy: A roux made of bacon or sausage drippings and flour, add seasonings, milk or cream, bits of sausage or bacon, and enjoy! Except restaurants tend to use Crisco or other cheap commercial fat, flour, artificial seasonings, and lots and lots of salt. Leading to a thick brown sauce that tastes like little more than liquid flour and salt.
So it's not that it's hard, and it's not that the leftovers are hard to come by. (If you're cooking 100 pounds of sausage a day, you HAVE sausage drippings. You just have to figure out how to catch 'em instead of letting 'em run off into the grease trap.)
It's just a LOT cheaper if you're going large-scale to use water, salt, and commercially-produced fat.And boy, is it nasty!
But, I like bisquik....
I think he means the gravy substitute is nasty.
It is hard to call bisquik nasty when it don't taste like much.
Well, let's be blunt: Water is cheaper than milk or fat. Salt is cheaper than any other seasoning.
So the restaurant biscuits tend to taste like (and probably are) Bisquik biscuits made with water and nothing else. A sad, flavorless, dense bit of starch.
Yes, the cornerstone of the dish is the gravy: A roux made of bacon or sausage drippings and flour, add seasonings, milk or cream, bits of sausage or bacon, and enjoy! Except restaurants tend to use Crisco or other cheap commercial fat, flour, artificial seasonings, and lots and lots of salt. Leading to a thick brown sauce that tastes like little more than liquid flour and salt.
So it's not that it's hard, and it's not that the leftovers are hard to come by. (If you're cooking 100 pounds of sausage a day, you HAVE sausage drippings. You just have to figure out how to catch 'em instead of letting 'em run off into the grease trap.)
It's just a LOT cheaper if you're going large-scale to use water, salt, and commercially-produced fat.And boy, is it nasty!
But, I like bisquik....
Bisquik made with added milk, eggs, and butter can be pretty tasty. Just treat it like what it is: Flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder.
The moment you're using water, Bisquik is nasty. In my snooty opinion, of course...
(I grew up on Bisquik pancakes made with added milk and eggs, and I loved 'em.)
EDIT: I think the funniest part is that my kids get pancakes or waffles from scratch every morning not because I'm a food snob, but because it's just as easy to keep flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, eggs, butter, and milk in the house as it is Bisquik. In fact, it's easier.
We just go through maple syrup at a disparaging rate. If only I could get my kids to eat eggs, oatmeal, or cold cereal...
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A bit off topic but, anyone got a good ragu recipe?** spoiler omitted **
I plan on taking out my some of my solid chunks tonight, adding a bit of their sauce to them,...
Update: my flavors have blended beautifully, and I hope they get even better by 6:30ish, but it should be amazing come tomorrow...
I'm surprised at the amount of vitriol aimed at Cracker Barrel in this thread. I've never been to one that wasn't at least good if not downright great. A little on the expensive side perhaps, though not extremely so. But more often than not perfectly worth the $15-20ish plus tip a meal and drink costs.
Yeah, I used to just to pre-mix the dry ingredients (flour, spices, instant coffee for red-eye gravy)...O.o
Whut.
Yeah, I know that's not how you make traditional red-eye gravy, but that's how I was raised doing it. I like the milk + instant coffee version over the actual coffee version much better.
But, I like bisquik....
Although I learned from Mom how to make biscuits and pancakes from scratch, growing up we had a lot of Jiffy mix biscuits and pancakes. I still get a hankering for Jiffy mix pancakes a couple times a year (kinda like my twice-a-year craving for a crappy Big Mac).
I really dislike Bisquick though, so I suppose that makes us mortal enemies.
I'm surprised at the amount of vitriol aimed at Cracker Barrel in this thread. I've never been to one that wasn't at least good if not downright great. A little on the expensive side perhaps, though not extremely so. But more often than not perfectly worth the $15-20ish plus tip a meal and drink costs.
I don't think I've ever eaten at a Cracker Barrel. If I have, it obviously wasn't memorable enough to be either that good or that bad.
Cracker Barrel is usually fine.
My complaint was their Biscuits and Gravy suck, and so I can't eat it there, and it is pointless for a single guy to make a batch of something he only want's maybe once a month, when a whole batch would take at least 3 meals to eat.
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It's a good thing I don't have willy-nilly firing authority at my company.
We have a very simple departmental standard: "Do not use two-column slides".
It exists for a very good reason: People use two-column slides because they're trying to put too much information on a single slide. The 5-second rule applies: If your audience can't read the entire slide in 5 seconds, you've got too much stuff on it. Good luck meeting that guideline with a two-column slide.
So, my colleague has released an entire course, 60-70% of which is two-column slides. The slides take 30-40 seconds to read, and are so dense that half the time I don't even know what they're saying.
And that's AFTER in my previous reviews of the course I have repeatedly told her, "DO NOT use two-column slides. They violate our standards, and they're causing you to put too much information on your slides."
*SIGH*
EDIT: The issue is, Global Megacorp has published standards. That everyone ignores, because no one ever enforces them. And then people complain that many of our courses are incomprehensible. We ask, "Why?", and they point to something that arose from ignoring the standards. Grr...
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I really dislike Bisquick though, so I suppose that makes us mortal enemies.
Welcome to the Bizarro Side.
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as a society, america doesn't haggle anymore. Years of consumerism means we pay the price on the tag- to do otherwise is stealing to many. While we can shop around, most skilled labor is smart enough to keep prices in range of their competitors. We also no longer teach these skills in schools that are not specialized for them, and are ready to sue both professional and neophyte the instant something goes wrong.So, just how stupid are Bay Area residents?
Shiro invited a contractor out to look at his back deck. All he's doing is having the concrete removed and paving stones put in instead. I joked that he should just fly Captain Yesterday out to do it, because it might be cheaper.
So... they came out and measured the space. 300 square feet. Not yards, not meters, not acres, but feet.
Their bid? $30,000.
With such a stupid bid, Shiro looked them up online, and yes, indeed, they have a reputation for being exorbitant. But as Shiro pointed out, somebody must be paying prices like that to keep them in business.
But $100 per square foot to put in paving stones? Yes, it would be much cheaper to fly CY out, pay his room and board, and have him do it.
At the moment, Shiro is trying other local contractors, but...
Oh, I think it's a lot less/more insidious than that.
We had a similar experience when we were getting our studio rebuilt and a well-respected local architect put in a bid of $48,000, just to design the building. Not build it. Not organize the work. Just design a 300 square foot building.
I complained about it to Father-In-Law (a long-time contractor and building inspector), and he explained that a lot of contractors don't want to say, "No" for PR reasons, so instead they inflate the prices so much that no one in their right mind would pay them. And if they DO get paid, it's a stupid amount of money for a trivial amount of work.
So, I'm not a contractor, but I would think that a reputation for...
I actually get irritated when contractors won't do a job too small. My Dad has a saying, if money can fix the problem, it's not a problem.
It's sometimes really hard to get someone to fix little things in your house, like Sparing concrete
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It was f*+&ing hot out today, or more specifically, f!@!ing hot and g+@~!*n humid.
And I'm pretty sure the pavers gained an extra ten pounds sitting in the sun all weekend, cause they felt heavier.
The important thing is, no one had to die.
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A bit off topic but, anyone got a good ragu recipe?** spoiler omitted **
I plan on taking out my some of my solid chunks tonight, adding a bit of their sauce to them,...
All right. Ragu I read is a meat based sauce that you put on pasta. I just call it spaghetti sauce here.
How do I make mine? Mind you I don't think it'd keep well.
1)Chop one large onion into tiny bits.
2)Fry onions until turning brown
3) Add a chopped green pepper in
4) Add 1/2 jar of Pregos Mushroom sauce in
5) Add in a tablespoon of minced garlic
6) Add in several shakes of tomato ketchup (3 tablespoons worth)
7) Add 2 tablespoons of sugar(slightly heaped)
8) Add 60 g of minced meat (pork/beef)
9) Add 3 shakes of black pepper
10) Add 1/5th can of Hormels bacon bits
For Halal variations, please use halal beef and Mccormick fake bacon bits
Makes sauce for 2-3 people.
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So it turns out that California Caverns, only two and a half hours away from Berkeley, are fantastic, not breathtaking on the level of Carlsbad, but with some really nice formations on a smaller scale (more like the Oregon Caves national monument) but the tours are smaller and a lot more fun. (NPS tour guides can be tightasses and spend more time warning you not to break the rules than they do actually telling good stories. Not always, but regrettably often.)
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I don't really get the appeal of biscuits and gravy.I didn't know biscuits and gravy existed. If I wanted to mop up gravy I'd use bread. Like a baguette.
Good biscuits and gravy are a moan-and-pound-the -table like Meg Ryan and the sandwich type of experience.
But not at Cracker Barrel.
The best I've had were in a ratty diner in a converted single-wide trailer with a plywood porch, out in northeastern Oklahoma, and since I was there with my Grandad I had to enjoy them demurely.
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I don't really get the appeal of biscuits and gravy.I didn't know biscuits and gravy existed. If I wanted to mop up gravy I'd use bread. Like a baguette.
The biscuits in question are a quick bread, made with flour, butter, milk and baking powder/soda. they can be rolled, or spoon-dropped, but are supposed to end up, flaky and heavy-ish. the gravy in question tends to be a specific thick flour and sausage gravy made with savory intent. the biscuits are then smothered thoroughly in the gravy. It is a dish met with varying degrees of disgust, love, or indifference. It is not really a question of mopping up the gravy, but a mode of eating sausage and carbs.
A bit off topic but, anyone got a good ragu recipe?** spoiler omitted **
I plan on taking out my some of my solid chunks tonight, adding a bit of their sauce to them,...All right. Ragu I read is a meat based sauce that you put on pasta. I just call it spaghetti sauce here.
How do I make mine? Mind you I don't think it'd keep well.
1)Chop one large onion into tiny bits.
2)Fry onions until turning brown
3) Add a chopped green pepper in
4) Add 1/2 jar of Pregos Mushroom sauce in
5) Add in a tablespoon of minced garlic
6) Add in several shakes of tomato ketchup (3 tablespoons worth)
7) Add 2 tablespoons of sugar(slightly heaped)
8) Add 60 g of minced meat (pork/beef)
9) Add 3 shakes of black pepper
10) Add 1/5th can of Hormels bacon bitsFor Halal variations, please use halal beef and Mccormick fake bacon bits
Makes sauce for 2-3 people.
If you remove the sugar and bacon, and then shimmer for 5+ hours you've got a pretty good sounding ragu there. Ragu is slowly shimmered to blend the spices in. I recommend basil, oregano, and Italian herb mix as a start.
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What's a scan tour? You're in Scandinavia, on vacation now?
And it's all those sneaky Frenchmen!
Viva La France!!
We surrender.
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If you remove the sugar and bacon, and then shimmer for 5+ hours you've got a pretty good sounding ragu there. Ragu is slowly shimmered to blend the spices in. I recommend basil, oregano, and Italian herb mix as a start.A bit off topic but, anyone got a good ragu recipe?** spoiler omitted **
I plan on taking out my some of my solid chunks tonight, adding a bit of their sauce to them,...All right. Ragu I read is a meat based sauce that you put on pasta. I just call it spaghetti sauce here.
How do I make mine? Mind you I don't think it'd keep well.
1)Chop one large onion into tiny bits.
2)Fry onions until turning brown
3) Add a chopped green pepper in
4) Add 1/2 jar of Pregos Mushroom sauce in
5) Add in a tablespoon of minced garlic
6) Add in several shakes of tomato ketchup (3 tablespoons worth)
7) Add 2 tablespoons of sugar(slightly heaped)
8) Add 60 g of minced meat (pork/beef)
9) Add 3 shakes of black pepper
10) Add 1/5th can of Hormels bacon bitsFor Halal variations, please use halal beef and Mccormick fake bacon bits
Makes sauce for 2-3 people.
The mushroom sauce comes in with premixed herbs. I added more Italian herbs once but my brother didn't care for it, so I passed. Basil usually sits better with people the oregano.
I think there is disconnect between what you think of Ragu and what I think of spaghetti sauce. That sauce I described was the stuff I cook like 1/2 h before lunch and throw it on the pasta for lunch. I certainly do not have 5 h to simmer stuff...
Also, I like my bacon bits and I like things sweet, so there =P
To each their own tastes, I am quite the sweet tooth.
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The biscuits in question are a quick bread, made with flour, butter, milk and baking powder/soda. they can be rolled, or spoon-dropped, but are supposed to end up, flaky and heavy-ish. the gravy in question tends to be a specific thick flour and sausage gravy made with savory intent. the biscuits are then smothered thoroughly in the gravy. It is a dish met with varying degrees of disgust, love, or indifference. It is not really a question of mopping up the gravy, but a mode of eating sausage and carbs.I don't really get the appeal of biscuits and gravy.I didn't know biscuits and gravy existed. If I wanted to mop up gravy I'd use bread. Like a baguette.
Usually for moping up gravies I prefer baguettes or even pitas. Using biscuits is an alien concept to me.
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I don't really get the appeal of biscuits and gravy.I didn't know biscuits and gravy existed. If I wanted to mop up gravy I'd use bread. Like a baguette.Good biscuits and gravy are a moan-and-pound-the -table like Meg Ryan and the sandwich type of experience.
But not at Cracker Barrel.
The best I've had were in a ratty diner in a converted single-wide trailer with a plywood porch, out in northeastern Oklahoma, and since I was there with my Grandad I had to enjoy them demurely.
CH and I eat at that table every time.
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They're all in a conspiracy! What difficulty are you playing at? What tech levels are you currently at? The scary ones are the Indians. They're all about peace, right till they get nuclear warheads...
Playing some Civilization II: Test of Time in between scan tours. The French just sneak-attacked me. So be it. I'll darken the skies with their ashes.
I love Civ II.