0004. biscuits & gravy

Normally, when I make biscuits and gravy, I take the easy way out: I pop open a can and toss them on a cookie sheet. Yes, I'm lazy. What? Making biscuits takes time. And your hands get all sticky when you knead the dough. But there's just something about making them yourself.

Anyway. This morning, we didn't have any biscuits in a can, and I had a

hankering for biscuits & gravy. So, I pulled out the box of Bisquick - the Heart Smart version, thank you very much. ;)

I used 2% milk to mix the dough and managed to keep my hands as unsticky as possible... which wasn't really a great success. What can I say? When you're kneading dough, you're going to get

messy.

I used a little bit of the Bisquick mix to try to keep the dough from sticking to me too much (it didn't work entirely, but it did the job well enough that I made pretty little round circles. The back of the Bisquick box said to roll it into a log and cut it up, but that just wasn't going to happen with my particular set of skills. I figure the way it came out, everything worked out fine.

I tossed the biscuits in the oven and started on the gravy. First, I took out some Armour beef meatballs from the freezer and tossed them in the microwave for a few minutes so they weren't blocks of ice.

I chopped up the meatballs and heated them up the rest of the way in the frying pan I planned to make the gravy in so that I could use the drippings for flavor, then spooned out the meat to a waiting bowl. After, I melted some I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light! and tossed in some flour to soak up the butter.

Then I poured in some 2% milk, but I ran out of milk. Oh, crap. I called my mom to ask if I could use evaporated milk and lo and behold, you can! Woohoo! You can add water to basically rehydrate it if the flavor is too off, but I liked the way it tasted after I added salt and pepper and tossed the chopped up meatball in, so I let it be.

I cut the biscuits in half, poured the gravy over the top (or in my husband's case, put butter on the biscuit, then put the gravy on top - he does so love his butter) and served while they were steamy hot. I had a big glass of water with mine because I'm on a big water kick. Monkey had lemonade with hers because that's all she wants these days.

I wish this picture were the right orientation. Even though I switched it, it won't show up correctly.