cookies is not biscuits is not not delicious

I woke up early and headed down to Kearny, NJ to have breakfastlunch with my girlfriend and our friends who were visiting from England. We used to live in the same building in Japan and they had gotten used to our hearty American brekkies when we would invite them over for breakfastdinners. Though I really do have a very diverse command of many different breakfast dishes, I am always commanded by visiting friends to make biscuits and gravy.

I am amazed that more people don't know about this amazing food as it is absolutely one of my most favorite foods ever and a very common breakfast at my family's big collective breakfasts on Sunday mornings. If you have no idea what I'm talking about either, I guess some brief explanations are in order.

Biscuits are a flaky, crumbly bread item more or less created by mixing flour and baking powder with something wet like water or buttermilk, then baking it in globs about the size of a flattened golf ball. Recipes will differ, but what they are not is cookies. I repeat in plain English for any Brits, Ozzers or Kiwis in the house, biscuits is not cookies. If you're still having trouble, think scone, then turn up the moist and crumbly dial.

Gravy means many things to many people, but in this case I mean a creamy meat sauce made from cooking sausage, making a rue from the rendered fat, adding milk and reducing till thick, then re-introducing the meat to the pan.

It took me a while to get down to Jersey and I am definitely a breakfast person, as you, my dedicated reader, must have intuited by now. Riding a New York City subway and reading The Burn Journal by Brent Runyon were not enough to keep away the morning pangs, so I snuck a Sarris' milk chocolate egg. Please, don't tell my mother.

Then, before actually making breakfast, I had a cup of Tazo "Awake" tea and half of a buttered pedingyashj(sp.?), which is a Portuguese roll that is possibly one of the greatest baked goods on Earth. Also quite obviously, that is not how you spell it, but I have no idea how you do spell it, so I will leave it for my Portuguese fans to ridicule me for later.
(Note: actually spelled "padinha", Ed.)

The girlfriend and I whipped up enough biscuits and gravy for 6 and two of her Jersey friends came over as well. They also had never had biscuits and gravy, which is a damn shame. I am saddened by the billions of people on this planet who have not had biscuits and gravy, especially those that have not had my grandmother's biscuits and gravy. Although more often than not she opts for the pre-made biscuits in the pop-open tube because she routinely serves breakfast to over a dozen people every Sunday, her gravy is the most amazing food you put on top of other food in the Entire World. I am still a mere gravy paduan, but I do have a small cult following, consisting mainly of my friends who have not been fortunate to eat at Grammy's on a Sunday morning.
Anyway, billions of people only living half their lives, very sad.

It's always nice to have desert after breakfast. There were plenty of biscuits so I ate a biscuit half with strawberry jelly, and a half with peach preserves, and a half with a Portuguese tomato marmalade and a half smeared with the insides of a Cadbury cream egg, imported from Cadbury, even. If you've never had tomato marmalade before, it's a trip. It's sweet, like jelly, and it tastes like tomatoes. I'm not the biggest tomato fan, and when I do eat them it's usually in the presence of bacon, lettuce, white American cheese, mayo and rye toast. This was a new tomato experience for me and one I imagine tomato lovers would really enjoy.

It's always nice to have desert after you have desert after breakfast. After the biscuits I had half a Mars egg, imported from Mars (Ireland, not Pennsylvania or the planet) and a cupcake. This was from the same batch of cupcakes as the smooshed half-cupcake you may remember from my first post. I had mistakenly reported that they were from somewhere in Manhattan. They were not. My girlfriend made them herself. I still don't know what the deal is with funfetti. It's a bit of a pink elephant.

So then there was Rutt's Hut. After a failed attempt at spending the afternoon looking at cherry blossoms somewheres in Jersey, Dora and her two Jersey friends and I -- the Brits having shipped off that afternoon; I hope they don't get their diner leftovers confiscated-- we decided that deep fried hotdogs and hamburgers would make for a nice afternoon. Indeed they did. If you've never heard of it, it's an amazing roadside treat for those of you who love true American swill.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=8859485

I had one of the hotdogs you can plainly see in their Myspace profile, there. They were fantastic; crispy on the outside, still juicy inside. The homemade relish was quite good, and together with a little spicy brown mustard, made for a very gratifying classic hot dog experience.
I also had a pork sandwich, sliced roast pork on your standard issue hamburger bun with brown gravy that somehow managed to drip both up and down the sides of the sandwich prior to it being served. This was also delicious. Both items cost less than two dollars, but the sandwich seemed the better value if only for the size. The seasoning on the roast and the gravy painted a picture of hard work and just rewards upon my palate.
I also had a bite of my girlfriend's deep-fried cheeseburger. I don't know if it was just the deep-frying or the quality of the meat, but the flavor of the beef really came out. It makes a McDonald’s cheeseburger seem like a gallon of kool-aid made with a half cup of sugar.
Top the whole swill experience off with some cheese fries and a pitcher of Pepsi for the table, and we had ourselves a very pleasant afternoon huddled amongst the whiskey bottles and wood paneling.

Later that night at home I dug into the bean pasta leftovers. It was still quite good, although the fennel was starting to fade. I had two breadknots on the side that came with a pizza my roommates had ordered earlier in the afternoon, a bottle of the Focus-A VitaminWater and I don't know what it is, but I am really enjoying cold, flat ginger ale, even after all signs of the stomach virus have passed.

My apologies for not actually posting this till Monday. I'm sure many of you wasted your entire Sunday updating this blog waiting to know what I ate on Saturday. Your devotion is felt and appreciated.