Wednesday on the Ponderosa

We started the day with some garden work, pulling the weeds and planting some squash plants to replace the ones that didn't make it.  We hope they can grow fast enough to provide us some late summer squash.
When lunch arrived we decided to try a new recipe.  I read a blog called The Pioneer Woman.  She also has a cooking show(The Pioneer Woman Cooks) on the food network that through the magic of DVR  I am able to watch.  The other day she made drop biscuits and sausage gravy and since we firmly believe that gravy makes everything better we decided to try it!  The biscuits we had were canned, I will attempt the drop ones later!  I can make biscuits and they are pretty, but not very tasty.  Practice is needed in the homemade biscuit area.  Until today I had trouble with gravy also, but this turned out great.  In this recipe you brown the sausage and then add the flour and mix it into the sausage.  Then the milk goes in.  It seemed less greasy and was easy to make.
Here's the recipe:

• SAUSAGE GRAVY
• 1 pound Breakfast Sausage, Hot Or Mild
• 1/3 cup All-purpose Flour
• 4 cups Whole Milk
• 1/2 teaspoon Seasoned Salt
• 2 teaspoons Black Pepper, More To Taste

With your finger, tear small pieces of sausage and add them in a single layer to a large heavy skillet. Brown the sausage over medium-high heat until no longer pink. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Sprinkle on half the flour and stir so that the sausage soaks it all up, then add a little more until just before the sausage looks too dry. Stir it around and cook it for another minute or so, then pour in the milk, stirring constantly.

Cook the gravy, stirring frequently, until it thickens. (This may take a good 10-12 minutes.) Sprinkle in the seasoned salt and pepper and continue cooking until very thick and luscious. If it gets too thick too soon, just splash in 1/2 cup of milk or more if needed. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Spoon sausage gravy over warm biscuits and serve immediately!

We cut the recipe in half because the Pioneer Woman cooks for a large family and cowboys.  There was only two of us so even after cutting the ingredients in half we had some leftovers. Next time I will cut back just a bit on the black pepper.

What's blooming on the Ponderosa

 And did I mention--It's fashion week on the Ponderosa!