The Great Gravy Cook Off

Without trying to toot our own horns, we're pretty decent cooks at our house. We eat very different things; Ryan is a carnivore, and I am a vegetarian carbivore , unified only by our love of potatoes and our disdain for onions. While we pretty much have who cooks what down to a science, there has been one sticking point: biscuits & gravy. Technically, it's just the gravy, as we enlist the help of Grands for the biscuits.

We have very different backgrounds - I am a liberal youngest of 5 children from the west coast, and he is a conservative only child from the south. We actually do have a lot in common, except our accents, some of our politics, and the hardest of all beliefs to merge: gravy. I firmly believe that breakfast gravy should be of the creamy, white, peppered variety. Ryan objects that a breakfast gravy should be a greasy, yellow, salty treat. Two and a half years into our marriage, we have learned that this is one topic that neither of us will totally budge on. When with his family, we have yellow gravy, and when with my family, we have white gravy.

 

A few days ago, we both had a craving for some biscuits & gravy, and decided that we would both attempt to make our respective mothers' recipe. As with anything in our house, we made it into a competition. The winner would receive bragging rights and be named the 'Sloan Gravy Maker' from here on forward.

We gathered our utensils (We only own 1 wisk, so I was given the immediate disadvantage of making scratch gravy with the beater from a hand mixer) and mentally prepared for the task ahead:

 

One of us equipped with a traditional tool and one of us having to make due with a beater, and our moms' recipes in mind, we set out to duplicate their famous gravy. Then we stirred, and stirred, and stirred, and stirred some more. Next came more stirring. And then a little more stirring for good measure. Meanwhile, our biscuits were golden brown and ready to be covered in our gravy creations. Biscuits are a lesser fought battle at the Sloan household - I am a fan of a flaky biscuit, while Ryan prefers a solid biscuit. Because I am a good wife, I conceded to a hearty solid biscuit.

 

 

Back to the star of the show, we were still stirring the gravy, neither of us 100% happy with our pans when we decided to call time and let the judging begin. Pan #1 was mine, and while I feel that I nailed the color and consistency, it was mostly because I added waaaaay too much flour, and that's all it tasted like. Pan #2 was Ryan's, and his also closely matched his mom's color of gravy, though it was due to the gravy being overdone.

 

 

 

 

All in all, we tied...in the 'we both lost and made bad gravy' way. Again, we're decent cooks, so we did the only logical thing and mixed the two batches together - it was better that way, but well short of the moms' legacies.

 

Not ones to give up easily, the next day presented us with another craving for biscuits & gravy (pretty much an every day occurrence), and another opportunity to perfect the recipe. We whole heartedly believe that one of the keys to a happy marriage is compromise, so we popped the flaky biscuits in the oven, started a pan of scrambled eggs, and combined our cooking expertise to try to make one good pan of gravy instead of two sub-par pans.

 

Since Ryan was the head chef on this endeavor, we aimed for a yellowish gravy, and figured if all else failed, eggs and biscuits weren't a terrible plan b. The two of us, the help of both moms, half the originally used flour, medium-high heat, and a few prayers later, we had more than edible biscuits and gravy, ladies and gentlemen!!

 

We have a new recipe in our repertoire, full bellies, and a whole new appreciation for our moms' cooking talents!



 







Things I Never Thought I Would Say: Dog Edition

Though we do not have any human babies yet, our lives have definitely been taken over by one sweet, adorable, stubborn baby of the four legged variety. If you have somehow managed to miss our barrage of social media posts over the last year pertaining to our dog, you have obviously been living under a rock and/or in a coma.

 

Mia Jane is our beautiful 3 year old boxer, who tips the scales at a whopping 60 pounds. The first 2 questions that everyone asks about her are 1.) Is she part great dane?, and when we tell them she is purebred boxer the next question/comment is always, 2.) Is she big for a boxer? She seems big for a boxer. As Ryan lovingly says, "She's a big, fine girl!"

 

While Mia is many things, the brightest crayon in the box she is not. I once remember my sister Tammy saying to her then 4 year old, "Jeremy, please don't put the dog's tail in your mouth.", and then immediately saying to me, "I have a whole list of things I never thought I'd say before I became a parent." While having nieces and nephews has partially prepared me for the list of things I will one day utter to my children, I was not prepared to verbalize any of the following commands to my aforementioned (sweet, but not particularly sharp) dog:

 

* It's just a leaf, Mia, not a murderer.

 

* No, no - we don't lick mom's eyeball.

 

* Mia, please don't eat the dirt I just piled with the broom.

 

* It's just a reflection, Mia, not a murderer.

 

* You have 3 water bowls - please stop drinking out of my glass.

 

* If I see that bone in my plant/clean laundry/shoe one more time, it's mine!

 

* You have 2 beds and 6 blankets - please stop pulling my blanket off of me at 3am.

 

* (As she is literally choking on her food): Take a breath!

 

* It's just a balloon, Mia, not a murderer.

 

* And my personal favorite: Ladies don't lick their own butts, Mia Girl.

 

It's a good thing she's pretty!!