December 8

HEAD CHEESE NIGHT

Tonight the family got together for head cheese making.

The first 45 minutes of the process were spent discussing the glories of biscuits and gravy. If you have been following along you know that we made pounds and pounds of breakfast sausage. This weekend was Biscuit and Gravy weekend at several of the brother's homes.

We found this dollar store package of country gravy at Runnings and it is really a cheaters way to some pretty decent gravy. I ran out of milk so had to make Bisquick biscuits with 1/2 sweetened condensed milk and 1/2 water. Kent claims that other than my homemade biscuits this may be one of the best meals I've ever made. I agree that they were good but 45 minutes good? Hmmmmm......

So tonight, I stood in stunned silence as Kent's brothers, in detail, expounded on the fabulous food unlike any other - country gravy with sausage over biscuits. I couldn't believe that something that I grew up with could bring so much satisfaction. For me biscuits and gravy are a family tradition. Knowing how to make homemade sausage gravy and cathead biscuits was a right of passage so it made the conversation of this new found wonder food even more unbelievable.

I can only compare it to the first time I had Kneophla Soup. We grew up with kneophla but to put it in SOUP! Unbelievable. (Thanks to the University of Mary for introducing me to this tasty morsel of wonderfulness.)

I sit even now, shaking my head thinking about how magical biscuits and gravy were to these boys. Seriously, at least 45 minutes. Every time a new person walked in the garage..."have you ever had breakfast sausage with country gravy mix?"


This is the boys having the BISCUIT DISCUSSION

Then it led to a 15 minute conversation of the best biscuits. While homemade can never be beat, Pillsbury Grands and my Sweetened Condensed Milk/Bisquick biscuits were the top choices.

We did actually get to the making of the head cheese. Head cheese is a combination of ground pork rind, pork meat, garlic, pepper, and salt. It is mixed and ground and stuffed in casings. We will boil it and press it tomorrow. When it is boiled it gets a gelatinous outer edge which I can honestly say makes my stomach roll - however, fried in a pan and served on crackers in the garage...now that is something special.







We made extra this year so we could give a bunch to my dad. Last year at Christmas Dad drove away with all of the head cheese we had left so we made sure to double our batch just so he could have some of his own. We plan to lure him to ND with the head cheese and then charge him for each loaf he gets. His payment will be helping Kent with our honey-do list. We negotiated one loaf per chore. It may be Easter tho before he is able to get up here to get it. Maybe I will take some to him if the weather is ever good enough.....

It is negative 6 degrees right now. Today we had a mini-snow storm. I woke up to what they were saying was 3 inches and blowing winds. Driving was.....challenging to say the least. Snow, blowing snow, pillow and finger drifts, white outs with passing cars. Then at about 10 am there was a second falling. All totaled it looks like we got between 5 and 6 inches. The weather casters called these flurries....the big storm is coming this weekend. Stay tuned for what may come.