Jan. 9, 2013: Biscuits with Sausage Gravy and Orange Slices; Ham and Broccoli Crescent Braid, Strawberry Spinach Salad and Toffee Chocolate Vanilla layered Parfaits

Biscuits with Sausage Gravy and Orange Slices



Ham and Broccoli Crescent Braid, Strawberry Spinach Salad and Toffee Chocolate Vanilla layered Parfaits

THE PLAN:

With 5 kids that keep us busy, meal times are an important time of the day for our family to keep connected and have both silly & important conversations that help us learn more about each other and what is going on in all our lives. So enhancing that experience with a wide variety of textures, flavors and healthy elements is important to me.

I prep dinner at the same time as I make breakfast - which saves me time at dinner and makes it more likely that I will cook dinner. The dinner hour is just so busy here - and it's when my energy sort of dips. So having everything ready to just be thrown together is huge for me. 

 

TODAY'S CHOICES:

For breakfast, on Wednesday's I usually do something with biscuits. Mostly because I absolutely love them - they are fluffy, warm and just the right combination of buttery and salty. Today I want to make sausage gravy to serve over them. The first time I ever had biscuits with sausage gravy was at a family reunion we had at a lodge in the Rocky mountains when I was a teenager. My mom had never made the dish and I thought it was the best breakfast I had ever had. It's still one of my favorites and evokes memories of being at that mountain lodge with the smell of pine outside and wood burning in the lodge's stone fireplace.

 

For dinner, the last 2 nights we had chicken in dishes that both had a spicy element - so tonight I want to go completely different. I decided to go with ham and pair it with Swiss cheese in a Ham and Broccoli Crescent Braid. On the side I'll do a simple Strawberry Spinach Salad.

 

For dessert, I want to do a parfait of some sort. I have some Symphony Toffee Almond bars that my family loves. So I think I will layer chocolate pudding with sweetened whipped cream and chopped chocolate toffee bars in Toffee Chocolate Vanilla layered Parfaits. 

BISCUITS AND GRAVY WITH SAUSAGE
Here's the recipe:
2 ¼ c. all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 ¼ tsp. sea salt
5 Tbsp. butter, cold
2 Tbsp. shortening  
1 c. buttermilk
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix 1 ¼ cups of the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt very well. Cut butter into ½ inch pieces and refrigerate along with shortening. In mixer pulse together the flour mixture and the butter and shortening pieces on low speed until crumbles are present. Whisk together buttermilk and the eggs. Add mixture to the flour/butter mixture and mix on low until a dough ball forms.
Add the remaining flour a little at a time until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough out onto floured work surface. With floured hands, gently press the dough out into an 11x8 inch rectangle about ¼ to ½ inch thick, dust lightly with flour and gently fold it over in thirds like a letter. Roll or press out into a 6x6 inch square rectangle again about 2 inches thick. Cut the dough into 9 squares (2x2 inches each). Transfer the biscuits to greased baking sheet about ½ inch apart. Or pat dough into a thickness of 1 inch and cut dough into rounds using a 2 ½ inch cutter and place biscuits close together on an ungreased cookie sheet. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let them rest at room temperature for 15 minutes.
Brush tops with melted butter then sprinkle with sea salt. Place baking sheet in the middle rack of hot oven and bake for 12-16 minutes or until lightly browned.

SAUSAGE GRAVY

I don't use a recipe for sausage gravy - this is just the basic way I make it:

In a large skillet, cook a pound of sausage – breaking it into pieces with the side of a fork until it is crumbly. There should be a good amount of fat in the pan. Sprinkle about ¾ cup of flour over the sausage and its fat, letting the flour soak up the fat. Get out a wire whisk, about 2-3 cups of milk and salt and pepper shakers. Holding the whisk in one hand and milk in the other, begin to pour the milk into the saucepan while quickly whisking the sausage-fat-soaked-flour into the milk while you pour. As soon as the milk hits the pan, whisk it into the flour to prevent any lumps forming. Keep pouring until all the milk is incorporated into the flour. Salt and pepper the mixture and keep whisking all the time until a thick gravy forms. Serve over the biscuits.

 

MAKING BREAKFAST:

I tried a lot of biscuit recipes before settling permanently on this one. It makes really fluffy perfect textured biscuits every time. But I don't make them exactly as the recipe calls for. First I turn on the oven, put 2 (un-cracked) eggs in a bowl of very warm water to bring them to room temperature, and measure a cup of milk and add 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar to the milk to sour it as a substitute for buttermilk (which I never have on hand). Then I use my Kitchen Aid and I put a cube of butter in the Kitchen Aid bowl and turn it on medium low. Then I add the baking powder, baking soda and salt to the butter while it's still mixing. Then I add the flour a little at a time and let it mix well until its crumbly. I crack the eggs in, one at a time, until they are well incorporated. Then I pour the soured milk in and only mix long enough to incorporate. If it is too sticky - I add a little more flour. But I let it be pretty sticky. I grease my hands and form 9 balls and place them fairly close together on a greased baking sheet and cook them until they are lightly browned.

I served them with the sausage gravy I made with Hot breakfast sausage and some orange slices on the side and hot chocolate to drink.

HAM AND BROCCOLI CRESCENT BRAID

Here's the recipe:
2 c. cooked ham, chopped
1 c. chopped fresh broccoli
1 small onion, chopped
1 Tbsp. dried parsley
2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 1/2 c. shredded Swiss cheese
2 (8 ounce) cans refrigerated crescent roll dough

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine ham, broccoli, onion, parsley, mustard and cheese. Stir well. Unroll crescent roll dough, and arrange flat on a medium baking sheet. Pinch together perforations to form a single sheet of dough. Using a knife or scissors, cut 1 inch wide strips in towards the center, starting on the long sides. There should be a solid strip about 3 inches wide down the center, with the cut strips forming a fringe down each side. Spread the filling along the center strip. Fold the side strips over filling, alternating strips from each side. Pinch or twist to seal. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until deep golden brown.

THIS PART I DID IN THE MORNING AT THE SAME TIME AS I WAS MAKING BREAKFAST:

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In the morning I cubed the ham. I just cut the precooked ham into thick slices (about 1/2- 3/4 inches thick) and then cut each slice lengthwise and crosswise. I stored them in a bowl in the fridge covered with plastic wrap. I chopped the broccoli and then steamed it in the microwave with a little bit of water in a glass bowl covered with plastic wrap, until it was tender but not mushy - it took about 6 minutes. Then I stored it in the fridge the same way. I chopped the Swiss cheese block the same way I chopped the ham, and then chopped the onion and stored them both in sandwich baggies in the fridge. 

THIS PART I DID AT DINNERTIME:
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First I preheated the oven and sprayed a large baking sheet with cooking spray. Then I sprayed the kitchen counter with cooking spray and opened the 2 cans of crescent rolls. I layed them side by side and took my rolling pin and smashed them into a large, wide rectangle. Then I carefully lifted the rectangle, pulling it away from the counter surface from one end and sliding my hand underneath and then transferred it to the greased baking sheet.
I  spread some Dijon mustard along the middle (lengthwise) 1/3 of the rectangle and then sprinkled parsley over it. (I didn't measure the mustard or parsley.) Then I took out the bowl of ham and tossed the broccoli, Swiss cheese cubes and chopped onions in and mixed them all together. I spread the ham mixture over the mustard.
I took a knife and cut a slit from the long edge of the rectangle towards the filling (in the center) about an inch from one of the short ends. I repeated this one inch apart all the way down both of the long sides. Then I folded the strips up over the filling, starting at one end and alternating the strips from each side over each other. I pinched and twisted the dough wherever necessary to hold the filling in and look pretty. Then I baked it for just over 20 minutes until it was golden brown.

 

STRAWBERRY SPINACH SALAD
I took a pint of strawberries and cut off their tops then sliced them lengthwise. I poured a small bag of fresh spinach into a salad bowl and tossed the strawberries in and then poured poppyseed dressing over it and lightly mixed it until the spinach and strawberries were nicely coated with it.

 Toffee Chocolate Vanilla layered Parfaits
I didn't have a recipe for this - I just used stuff I had on hand to make these.
AND THEY WERE YUMMY! 

1. I set out 6 parfait glasses.
2. I coarsely chopped one extra large Toffee Almond Symphony bar with a large knife.
3. I dumped a 2 lb. tub of Cool whip into a medium sized mixing bowl. I added a cup of powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla and mixed it up with an electric hand-held mixture until it was well-whipped.
4. In another bowl, I mixed a 6-serving size package of chocolate pudding with 3 cups of milk for 2 minutes. I let it set for about 3 minutes - just to let thicken it a little bit.
5. I poured about 1/3 cup of the chocolate pudding into the bottom of each glass
6. I scooped some of the sweetened Cool Whip into each cup until I had used all of it and each had about the same amount. I used the back of a spoon to smooth the top of each.
7. I sprinkled the symphony bar pieces over the Cool Whip layer in each cup
8. I divided the remaining chocolate pudding to top each cup.