Cold weather and warm food.

It's our first winter in New Jersey, and boy has it delivered. We've had lots of snow, and lots of very low temperatures. Today was no exception.

Don't let the beauty fool you, the snow caused a state of emergency to be declared and caused more than its fair share of accidents. Thankfully, warm weather is right around the corner.

Throughout the day we endured messages and Facebook posts from our "friends" back home. They're having beautiful 70 degree weather, and enjoying it. We decided that if we couldn't have southern weather, we'd at least have some southern food! So, we made Arya's favorite. Biscuits and gravy. I took a few pictures and figured we'd share our favorite recipe with you guys.


Here are the things you'll need:

All purpose flour
Baking powder
salt
butter
buttermilk

We start by making the biscuits. Throw in 3 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. 

Then start by making buttermilk, because if you are like me you don't have any, and never do. Just take 2 cups of milk and add in 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (or vinegar if you don't have lemon juice). And ignore my feet. 

Let your buttermilk sit for up to 10 minutes. While you're letting it sit, cut up 1 and 1/2 stick of butter (cold, don't soften it). 

Then, throw that on top of the flour mixture.

Stir it up (with a mixer, or by hand. I always go by hand) until it looks grainy and the butter is mixed in well. 

Your buttermilk should be done by now. You'll know it's done because it will have little chunks of milk throughout the bowl. Just take a spoonful of it and check. Then, take a couple of tablespoons and mix it into the flour mixture. Keep mixing until it looks like the picture below. It took 1 and 1/4 cups to get it to look like this for me, but YMMV. 

Then plop a bit of it down on your pan and stick them into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or so. These are going to be some ugly biscuits, but they're going to be good. 

And here they are out of the oven. Ugly, but good. You'll know they're done when they get to be golden brown. 

While the biscuits are cooking, start to brown your sausage. 

Once it's all browned, add in a couple of tablespoons of flour. DO NOT DRAIN THE GREASE. It will get soaked up by the flour.  I added in about 3 tablespoons at a time and stirred. I ended up adding 1/3 cup total. 

Once it's all coated and you're done adding flour, add in about 3.5 cups of whole milk (not the buttermilk from before, just normal whole milk). Cook at medium heat. Stir constantly until it starts to thicken a bit, and then let it sit. 

Once it starts to thicken, add in a bunch of pepper. This is what I started with, but had to add a lot more. Just taste it and see what you think. Go from there. After adding all of your pepper, add about .5 teaspoons of salt. 

Stir it all up until it is as thick as you'd like. Ryan likes it runny so I don't let it thicken all the way. 

We ate it too fast to get a picture of them mixed together, sorry :(

As a consolation, here is Arya enjoying her non-mixed biscuits and gravy. 

And that's our favorite meal. 

For my friends in the north, how are you staying warm? And my southern friends, are you enjoying the new warm weather?