Great Starts..

I'm fairly certain my husband and I fell in love over breakfast. Not a particular breakfast...just breakfasts in general.

You see, there are many people out there who skip breakfast. Maybe they are short on time, or cutting calories, or just can't eat a big meal first thing. My husband and I do NOT fall into that category. I will happily eat carrot sticks and salad for dinner and lunch, so long as I started the day with a hearty breakfast. While many couples start their relationship on fancy dinners, the husband and I found ourselves at Denny's. And no, this wasn't after some late-night rendezvous (get your head out of the gutter). It's just something about the meal that started a perfect day.

In the early period of our relationship and marriage, we also ate meat. A typical "good" breakfast usually included bacon or sausage. I learned to make a pretty mean gravy, too. You can imagine that breakfast lost some of the luster when we swore off meat over a year ago.

Several weekends back, I wanted to make something different for breakfast. Pancakes are great, but I was looking for hearty and savory. I got the idea to re-create a gravy using vegetarian ingredients - basically making a white sauce with the right herbs. As it turns out, it hit all the right notes.

The Biscuits.

I used the recipe here, but substituted butter for shortening. What I LOVE about this recipe is how quick and easy it is. No kneading, rolling and cutting. And really, if you're just smothering it with gravy - who cares how uniform it is?

The Gravy:

1/2 a stick of butter
3 heaping tablespoons of flour
about a 1/4 cup of finely chopped onion
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced or grated on a micro-plane
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Milk to thin
Salt and pepper to taste
If desired: Morning star crumbles (for a more "sausage like" consistency)

1. Melt butter in heavy bottomed pan, add onions, and saute until translucent

2. Add garlic, sage, and thyme and saute for about a minute more.

3. Add flour, and with a whisk, saute until it turns lightly golden and bubbly.

4. Add milk to desired consistency. Add crumbles (if desired) and heat. Salt and pepper to taste.

To serve - crack the biscuits in half and smother with gravy. If the potatoes look good to you, I just chopped up some red potatoes, tossed with some olive oil and grated garlic, and baked in the same oven as the biscuits (450 for 20-30 minutes). Salt when done.