This summer and fall, though I was on an accidental-on-purpose hiatus from posting, I was not on hiatus from cooking. I was, however, dialing back my habit of dramatically over-estimating how many evenings a week I could cook, how long exotic ingredients would keep their freshness or my interest, or how committed I would be to cooking after working a 12-hour day. I started using a lot of ingredients on repeat, mixing and matching them in different variations depending on how whacked out my schedule ended up looking like on any given day. A few of the ingredients I came to rely heavily on were mushrooms, zucchini and yellow squash that were exploding out of my garden at a tremendous clip, chicken breast, and of course, pasta.

If I published every variation of vegetable-y pastas with light cream sauces that I played with last fall, I’m pretty sure you’d think that’s all I ate. (At some point I’ll share some more of them with you, when I actually have more vegetables growing in their prime.) This is one of my favorites that came out of those months, my quick-I-need-dinner-and-what-do-I-have-in-the-fridge-to-piece-it-together season.

What I like most about this meal is the noticeable lack of sauce. There are no swimming noodles here. Really, the liquids that are tossed onto the mushrooms and simmered for a bit are mostly just a vehicle for carrying the earthy, punchy flavor of the mushrooms onto the noodles.

You can also totally make this without chicken if you don’t want it or don’t have any thawed – I consider it a huge success if I’ve actually thawed something in advance. If you need even more time savers or are short on ingredients, you can easily swap the garlic cloves for garlic powder, or the fresh thyme for dried. That’s what dried herbs are there for!

This dish is easy enough that it can be tossed together and modified based on what you have on hand, but it’s also fancy-tasting enough to make for a dinner party. Win-win.

Pasta with Chicken and Mushroom Sauce
Serves 3-4 as a main course

8 oz boneless skinless chicken breast
1/2 T olive oil
salt & pepper
8 oz cavatappi pasta (or other twirly shape)
1 T unsalted butter
8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 T fresh thyme leaves (or 1 tsp dried thyme)
1 tsp course salt
a few cranks of freshly ground pepper
1/2 c dry white wine
1/2 c heavy cream
1 oz freshly grated parmesan cheese
pasta water as needed

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Once you’ve started cooking the mushrooms, add pasta to the boiling water and cook to al dente. Reserve at last half a cup of pasta water before draining and set pasta aside, covered, while other ingredients finish cooking.

While the water is heating, heat olive oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Salt & pepper chicken breast and sear on each side until cooked through. Once the chicken is done, remove it to a cutting board and slice into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.

While the chicken is cooking, heat butter in a medium frying pan. Add mushrooms, garlic, thyme, course salt, and freshly ground pepper to the melted butter and toss. Mushrooms should release their juices and cook down quite a bit. Once mushrooms have darkened and look soft, increase heat to medium high to sear the mushrooms a bit, tossing frequently. Reduce heat back to medium and add white wine. Cook for 3-4 minutes until reduced by half, then add the cream. Stirring frequently, allow cream to thicken slightly. Remove from heat and stir in parmesan cheese.

Combine pasta, chicken, and mushroom cream sauce in a large pot. Add a bit of the pasta water if it seems too dry. Serve immediately and often!

I realize that I’m a few days late for writing a post about an easy party snack that takes very little effort, is tremendously delicious, and is great for sharing since it is HIGHLY addictive and calorie-dense. My bad.

But lucky for us, there are more reasons to celebrate and indulge coming right up. Valentines Day! The Olympics! Saturday!

If you don’t have a good roasted nut recipe in your arsenal, this is an excellent candidate. I’ve previously relied quite heavily on these little gems, but I’m glad to now have another that doesn’t scream “HOLIDAYS!” quite so loudly. You can use any mix of nuts you like: I had planned to only use cashews and tossed in pecans on a whim, but I now think I like the pecans even more than the cashews.

This is pretty simple stuff: preheat oven, mix the nuts with some goop, try not to burn them in the oven. In fact that last part might be the most challenging. I dropped the temp of the oven from the original recipe because I (gasp) burned the crap out of my first batch. Pecans are especially susceptible to burning, so keep a sharp eye.

The result is a pile of shiny, glazed pecans and cashews that is a pleasant, slightly savory departure from your average honey-roasted fare. Best of luck keeping them around for very long.

Savory Honey-Glazed Nuts
Adapted from Joy the Baker Cookbook

1 c roasted & salted cashews
1 c raw pecan halves
1/4 c honey
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp ground yellow mustard
a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper
salt

Preheat oven to 300°F. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together honey, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Add nuts and mix well until all nuts are coated. Spread nuts out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Add a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper.

Bake for 10 minutes, then stir the nuts, then bake for another 10 minutes. Remove nuts from the oven and immediately sprinkle lightly with salt. Allow the nuts to cool completely. Once you store them, the nuts will stick together slightly, but shouldn’t be sticky on your fingers.

So here’s the gods honest truth: I used to boil the ever-loving crap out of eggs. To be fair, Easter was about the only time we ever boiled them growing up. After we’d dyed them, peeled them to reveal the tie-dyed ellipses beneath, and mixed the yolks with a generous amount of mustard and Miracle Whip (an ingredient I’ll defend to the death when making Deviled Eggs), the gray-green, sulfury halo around the yolks didn’t really seem to matter much.

On the rare occasions that I ate straight-up, un-deviled hard boiled eggs, I only ate the whites. And small wonder! I was, however, flummoxed: how come the yolks in some store-bought eggs looked so, well, appetizing? I decided to actually look up a recipe, and what do you know: other people have already figured this out. But since I was TWENTY-NINE before I actually learned to do this right, I thought you guys might want some tips too. The big secret? Hard boiled eggs don’t actually need to boil for more than a moment.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Get some eggs. Fresh eggs are the hardest to peel, so this is a great way to use up the end of an older batch.

2. Place the eggs in a single layer in a pot large enough to accommodate them. Cover the eggs with at least an inch of water.

3. Bring the pot to a boil over medium-high heat. (You’re probably won’t be as foamy as this… one of my eggs broke early in the process, which makes a big ugly foamy mess.)

4. Once the water comes to a full boil, turn off the heat and cover the pot. Leave the pot on the burner (I have a glasstop stove, so I put the pot half off the burner since those suckers NEVER cool down) and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes depending on the size of your eggs and how hard you want the yolk. I want my yolks to be solid, and I generally use large to extra large eggs, so the full 15 minutes works for me. If you are nervous about going to far, boil an extra egg so you can check one after 10 or 12 minutes. I can think of worse things to do with 70 calories.

5. Drain the hot water off the eggs and add cold water to the pot, along with a big handful of ice cubes. You’ll want to wait until the eggs are completely cool before peeling.

6. Peel the eggs. Eat the eggs. Love the eggs!

Hi.

I’m finally clearing out the dust bunnies and cobwebs from my little food blog, which has been somewhat abandoned on a shelf for a while while my job has been the focus of my creative energy. The last six months have been exhilarating, exhausting, and exciting, but as a result, I’ve felt culinarily dead inside. I’ve been in triage mode: cooking only the fastest and easiest recipes in my arsenal (that is, when I cooked at all) and focusing on meals that made lots of leftovers so I only needed to cook every few days. Finally though, the muse is slowly re-awakening. I am interested once more in trying out new recipes, and more importantly, taking twice as long to make them so I can take pictures of the process to share with you.

But I’m not jumping back into the deep end, exactly. What I needed was some granola, and when I felt pretty meh about the options available in the cereal aisle, I grabbed a canister of oats ran for it, deciding I’d figure something out when I got home. And thanks to my sister’s excellent Christmas present, I found the answer pretty quickly: a ridiculously easy granola recipe with only three ingredients. I decided to add a fourth, but only because I had some cranberries in the pantry.

I’ve made granola before, and I’ll be honest, there are a few reasons I don’t make it very often. First, I go through phases with yogurt, so it’s not something that strikes my fancy very often. Second, it’s kind of a hassle to round up all the ingredients. So this recipe, with only oats, salt, and maple syrup, sounded too good to be true. BUT IT ISN’T.

After a few quick stirs to cover the oats with syrup, the mixture is just spread on a parchment-lined baking sheet and baked for less than 20 minutes. The finished product has every attribute I care about in granola: lightly sweet, extremely crunchy, easy to make, and easy to clean up.

You can leave out the cranberries, or swap them for dried apples, or add nuts or sunflower seeds, or whatever. It’s your granola. But there’s really no need for a ton of ingredients, multiple kinds of sweetener, or chopping of anything. This is yogurt-ready in less than half an hour from start to finish.

I honestly don’t know why anyone would ever make granola any other way.

Cranberry Maple Granola
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen Every Day

2 c rolled oats
1/2 c dried cranberries
1/2 c maple syrup
1/2 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix until oats are coated in syrup. Spread evenly across a large, parchment-lined baking sheet, making sure to limit clumps to a minimum.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, checking it at 10 minutes and every 2-3 minutes thereafter to make sure it doesn’t burn. The oats should be lightly golden brown across the pan, with slightly darker edges. Cool completely on the baking sheet, then remove and crumble up before storing in an airtight container.

The Fourth of July is upon us, and while many people will be prepping grills and wood piles for their festivities, can I interest you in an alternative? One that doesn’t require standing over a flaming rack of meat in the peak of American summer and does most of the cooking work on its own over the course of a day?

If so, this pulled pork is for you!

It’s taken me a long time to come around to pulled pork. I’m not generally a fan of shredded meat… it often makes me feel like I’m eating like, I don’t know, hair or something? But lately I’ve been unable to resist the ease of dumping a pork roast in the slow cooker, going to work, and coming home to a ready-made dinner that will last us for DAYS.

The key to this recipe is using smoked paprika. I keep both smoked paprika and regular paprika at home, and I can tell you: they really do taste different. Since I can’t make real barbecue at myself by roasting a pig over coals for hours on end, the smokiness in the paprika really helps it taste more like the real deal.

Once the roast has cooked for 9 hours or so, you’ll be amazed at how easily it shreds. I just use a couple of serving forks and it falls apart easily and quickly.

This pork tastes utterly delightful straight out of the pot. I, however, also like to boost it up at the end with just a bit of barbecue sauce. But, you can also just serve extra sauce on the side. Either way, you’re in for a delightfully satisfying meal that will be welcome at any of your holiday festivities, or as a week’s worth of dinners just for your household.

Happy Fourth!

Slow Cooker Barbecue Pulled Pork
Adapted from Slow Cooker Gourmet

Note: This feeds… a lot of people. It makes enough pork for 14-16 sandwiches using regular-sized buns. If you’re making this for just a couple of people, feel free to halve it so you don’t have to commit to eating all-pork-all-the-time for several days.

5-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp kosher salt
2 T smoked paprika
2 T dark brown sugar
3/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 pound pork roast, trimmed of excess
3 T apple cider vinegar
2 T water
2 yellow onions (small to medium) thinly sliced
1/3 – 1/2 c of your favorite barbecue sauce (optional)

Mince the garlic and mix it together with the salt on a cutting board. The mixture should form a gooey paste. Mix the paprika, brown sugar, black pepper, and cayenne in a separate bowl and set aside.

Rub the garlic paste onto both sides of the pork. Then rub the spice mixture into the pork on all sides.

Add the apple cider vinegar and water to the bottom of a slow cooker. Place the rubbed pork into the slow cooker and include any bits of spice that have fallen off onto the cutting board. Thinly slice the onion and mound it around the pork.

Cook on low for 8-10 hours. When you are ready to serve, remove the pork to a cutting board and shred it using large forks. Return it to the slow cooker and mix in the liquid and the onions. Adjust seasoning to taste. If desired, add 1/3 – 1/2 c of your favorite barbecue sauce. Heat on high for 10-15 more minutes to allow the sauce to heat up. Alternately, you can add barbecue to the meat separately when serving.

Serve on buns, or just with forks, or however you like your pork.

Though the last few months have been a meteorological roller coaster here in Colorado, the temperatures that now soar up near or above 90 every day indicate that summer has finally arrived in full. The air conditioner in our apartment can hardly keep up with the summer sun, blazing through our western-facing windows on its long descent toward the mountains. Fortunately, our freezer faces no such challenge and can house within it a treasure trove of icy treats perfect for combating the summer heat. And what better way to welcome the arrival of the season than with a dessert that features one of its most celebrated fruits?

Ahhh, rhubarb. Such pretty stalks. Such poisonous leaves. (Seriously, don’t eat the leaves.) And such a short growing season that it’s best to indulge heavily when it finally appears. I can hardly prevent myself from making into my favorite Rhubarb Crisp, but in an effort to broaden my horizons, I dug into a very, very vintage cookbook to find some new ideas. To my delight, I discovered marlow, a dessert that is now so out of the common psyche that when I poked around to learn more, I couldn’t even find it on Wikipedia.

From what I’ve pieced together, marlow is a marshmallow-based dessert that can either be frozen to mimic ice cream or chilled to mimic mousse. It can feature a variety of flavors as the marshmallow, sugar, and heavy cream act as a clean canvas onto which you can paint rhubarb, cherries, chocolate, butterscotch, or anything else you want to eat for dessert. After the fruit (in this case) is cooked down with sugar, the marshmallows and whipped cream are mixed in to create a frothy, fluffy mixture ready for freezing.

If you fancy fruity ice cream but don’t want the hassle of making it yourself, I highly recommend trying this instead. The method is incredibly straightforward and creates a dessert so reminiscent of ice cream you’ll hardly realize it’s not. Plus look how trendy you’ll be if you’re on the front end of bringing back marlow!

Rhubarb Marlow
Adapted from Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking

1 pound rhubarb, diced (about 3 cups)
1 T water
3/4 c granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
4 oz mini marshmallows
1 c heavy whipping cream
1 T lemon juice

Place bread pan or other medium-sized dish in the freezer to chill. Make sure cream stays in the fridge until it is ready for whipping.

Place rhubarb and water in a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, until juices begin to release, about 5 minutes. Add sugar and stir until sugar has dissolved. Continue cooking until rhubarb is tender but not broken down, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and add salt and marshmallows. Mix thoroughly until marshmallows have completely melted. Pour the mixture into another bowl and place in the fridge to chill until it is not warm to the touch.

Once the rhubarb mixture has cooled, combine heavy cream and lemon juice and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold whipped cream into the rhubarb mixture, then turn it into the chilled bread pan. Freeze for 4-6 hours or until it is the consistency of fluffy ice cream.

It’s funny how things change from when you’re little. As a child, I had a very uncomfortable relationship with eggs. With breakfast in general, actually. At the risk of sounding gross, on school days, I frankly couldn’t eat eggs for breakfast without the risk of them coming back up. Perhaps it was the 30 minute car drive on windy mountain roads. Perhaps it was the vestige of the tendency for nausea that I experienced as an infant. Either way, it took YEARS before I started eating eggs for breakfast on a regular basis.

Now, of course, it’s almost laughable how much I love eggs. For breakfast, as a mid-morning snack, as a burst of protein at lunch, baked or custard-y in desserts. But I especially like them in frittatas.

Frittatas provide most of the benefits of a quiche. Sure, you don’t get a flaky, golden crust to cradle the eggs, but you can also make a frittata in like, 20 minutes. Quiches are great, but they are not quick.

I also like that frittatas hold up well as leftovers. A frittata made on Sunday will feed me a warm, savory breakfast for most of the coming work week. Alternately, they feed a brunch crowd with minimal effort.

The one key challenge? Not burning it to a crisp. I broil my frittatas so they have a nice, golden-brown top, but a few minutes distraction is enough to ruin your breakfast and, frankly, your day. I literally sit on the floor and watch mine cook to make sure they don’t burn.

The result? Wedges of fluffy eggs, studded with ham and onion, beneath a crispy layer of hot cheese. Mm. I think I’ll go make another.

Ham, Cheddar, & Onion Frittata

1 1/2 T unsalted butter
4 oz diced ham
3 oz diced yellow onion
2 oz grated sharp cheddar cheese
6 eggs
1/3 c milk
1/4 tsp seasoned salt
3-4 cranks of freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven on the broiler setting. Dice ham and onion and grate the cheddar cheese. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, salt, and pepper for 3-4 minutes.

Melt the butter in a 10-inch oven-safe frying pan over medium heat. Add the ham and onions and sauté for 5-6 minutes until the onions have softened and are beginning to brown. Spread the ham and onions evenly across the pan. Pour the egg mixture over the ham and onions and quickly stir so they are evenly distributed. From this point on, do not stir the mixture. Sprinkle the cheddar evenly over the top.

Once the edges of the frittata are cooked (they’ll be lighter in color and look solid), place the frying pan on a middle rack in the oven. Broil for 6-10 minutes, watching it VERY closely. Stay focused: the frittata will quickly burn if left under the broiler for too long. Once the top is golden-brown, solid at the center, and fairly puffy, remove the pan from the oven and allow to cool for 2-3 minutes. The frittata may flatten a bit during this time.

Cut the frittata into six wedges and serve immediately. This also holds up very well as leftovers.

I’m horrified to report that as a child, I didn’t care for banana bread. I don’t know what about it displeased me, but frankly, I was a fairly picky eater for many years and shunned off a number of foods that I now find delicious. Lately, we’ve been on a bit of a banana kick in our house, but we inevitably end up with a couple of bananas that reach their prime too quickly and end up getting blacker and more shriveled on the counter as the days go by. Fortunately, the cooking gods have a perfect solution for this problem. As bananas ripen and their sweetness becomes far too over-powering to eat them on their own, they become the perfect mix in for a loaf of sweet, tangy, breakfast bread.

There are a few things I really like about making banana bread. One, I hate wasting food, so I find it extremely satisfying to re-purpose over-ripe fruit to make something new and magical out of them. Two, this old recipe (given to me from my mother, who got it from HER great-grandmother) is extremely straight forward. The ingredients are quite basic, and the instructions are fast and easy. No complicated folding, alternating, sifting, or resting required.

After baking for about an hour, this no-fuss loaf emerges with craggy, crisp edges and a soft crumb that can dress down for breakfast or dress up for dessert.

I like mine warm with a little bit of butter, but this is also perfectly acceptable at room temperature with nothing added whatsoever.

It’s a good thing I’ve come around to liking banana bread, because glancing at the fruit bowl on the counter, it looks like I may be making another loaf rather soon.

Banana Nut Bread
Adapted from my great-great grandmother Hume

Makes 1 loaf

2/3 c (140g) sugar
1/3 c unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs
1 c (250 g) ripe bananas, squashed
1 3/4 c (240 g) all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda (use 1 tsp if baking below 3000 feet)
1 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c (60 g) chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350°F. If you are using a non-stick loaf pan, grease the bottom and sides of the pan or insert parchment paper to make a cradle along the bottom and long sides of the pan.

Cream together sugar and butter until fluffy. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Pour into loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes or until top is browned and a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then flip the loaf onto a cooling rack. Flip the loaf over and allow to cool. For soft-edged bread, wrap tightly in aluminum foil while it is still somewhat warm.

I’m such a sucker for seasons. Each fall, I revel in the last blasts of colorful leaves before they fall to the ground and the first brisk morning that requires a jacket and boots. When winter arrives, the first snowfall leaves me breathless at its beauty. Then, as the days lengthen and spring erupts out of every bulb and tree bud, I wonder how I ever functioned without it. I swear, as appealing as climates like San Diego sometimes feel, I really don’t know what I’d do without the anticipation and satisfaction provided by shifting seasons.

At the moment, I’m clamoring for summer. For late evening walks in short-sleeved tees and sunlight after 8pm and COOKOUTS and mini golf. This weekend, after several days of positively gorgeous weather that hinted at the season to come, I quite simply couldn’t take it anymore and I pretended it had arrived right in my own kitchen by whipping up a batch of barbecue pulled pork and a simple, delightful potato salad that tastes just like summer.

I freakin’ love potato salad, and this one checks all the boxes I look for in a ideal scoop. Smooth chunks of potato still in their skins, a tangy assortment of crunchy mix-ins, cool and crisp, and most importantly, LIGHTLY DRESSED. I’m not interested in swimming through an ocean of mustard-flavored mayonnaise to uncover the 2-3 pieces of potato that may be hidden within, thank you very much. Most importantly, this salad is composed of pretty basic ingredients that I almost always have on hand and comes together fairly quickly.

My favorite part of the light dressing? This salad doesn’t get soggy. In fact, I feel like the flavor only improves the longer it chills in the fridge fully mixed.

If you have a picnic or a potluck to attend soon, I highly recommend bringing this along. Or, if you just want to have a fake picnic in your apartment in late April and then eat the leftovers for a few days at lunch since you didn’t have a giant group of people to share it with, I highly recommend it for that, too.

(Summer’s coming!)

Potluck Potato Salad
Adapted from Better Homes & Garden and Smitten Kitchen

Makes 8-10 side dish servings

Note: We have a celery-hater in our house, so I don’t include it despite the fact that it’s a pretty classic ingredient in potato salad. If you want some celery in your salad, dice up a 1/2 cup and mix it in with the onions, eggs, and pickles.

2 pounds of red potatoes, scrubbed clean
3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1/2 c diced red onion
1/2 c diced dill pickle
1/2 c diced celery (optional)
1/2 c mayonnaise
1 T brown mustard
1 T apple cider vinegar
1 tsp dried dill
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

Scrub potatoes clean but keep the peels on. Cover with 2-3 inches of water in a large pot and bring to a boil. Cover and cook at a rolling boil for 25-30 minutes or until potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork.

While the potatoes are boiling, chop the eggs, onions, and pickles and place in a large mixing bowl. In a separate small mixing bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar, dill, salt, and pepper. Keep in the refrigerator until you are ready to mix the salad.

Drain and cool the potatoes until they can be comfortably handled with bare hands. Cut the potatoes into cubes, discarding any large strips of skin that come off easily.

Add the potatoes and dressing to the large mixing bowl with the other ingredients and mix well. Chill the salad for 2-3 hours or until you are ready to serve.

Comfort food, thy name is Biscuits and Gravy. This is usually my first stop on the menu at a new breakfast or brunch joint, and there’s no way I want it to be anything other than a soft, fluffy biscuit nestled in a wave of rich gravy and crumbled breakfast sausage. Woe to the trendy places that try to gussy it up.

But this hearty meal is also incredibly easy to make at home. So maybe it’s really woe to me for not doing so every damn weekend.

First up, the biscuits. These ones are super easy and super fast. The ingredients are pretty basic, and I keep most of them on hand on a regular basis. No raising, very little kneading, and just a few passes with a rolling pin and we’re on our way to biscuit magic.

Next, the gravy. Which honestly, is even easier than the biscuits. All it takes is a pound of sausage, some flour and milk, and a little seasoning. I love my gravy a little herb-y, so I like adding rosemary or sage, too.

With two recipes so easy to put together, there’s really no reason you can’t start a brunch place in your very own kitchen. I guarantee you it will be a shorter wait.

Buttermilk Biscuits
Adapted just a bit from my Grandma’s recipe

Makes 5-6 medium-sized biscuits

2 c all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder (2 tsp at high altitude)
1 tsp baking soda (1/2 tsp at high altitude)
1/2 tsp salt
4 T salted butter, cold
about 1 c buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425°F. Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl or food processor and mix with a fork. Chop butter into small cubes and add to the bowl. Cut the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter or by pulsing in a food processor until the mixture is crumbly. Slowly add the buttermilk and mix until slightly sticky. You made need slightly more or less than 1 c of buttermilk.

Place the sticky dough on a floured surface and knead lightly for about 5 minutes. Roll out until about 3/4″ thick. Cut into biscuits using a round cutter, or use a knife if you prefer square biscuits.

Place biscuits on a baking sheet and bake for 12-18 minutes or until the tops of the biscuits are golden brown.

If desired, add a small pat of butter to the top of each biscuit as soon as they are removed from the oven. Serve with gravy, butter and jam, or just by themselves. Store in an airtight bag for up to 4 days.

Rosemary Sausage Gravy
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Enough for 5-6 medium-sized biscuits

1 pound ground breakfast sausage
3/8 c flour
4 c milk
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp seasoned salt
1 1/2 tsp ground rosemary

Cook sausage in a large frying pan until browned. Add flour and mix thoroughly so it can soak up any grease. Cook for 1-2 minutes. Add milk and set at medium-high. Stirring fairly constantly, cook until the gravy has thickened to the desired consistency. When it’s ready, it should slide off a spoon rather than drip. Add the pepper, salt, and rosemary and adjust seasoning as needed.

Spoon over biscuits and serve.