Biscuits and Gravy and Giblets

Most conversations this time of year concern food, so  I want to add to that already overwhelming number.

I've been thinking of my mother during the past week because five years have passed since her death. I remember so many things about her and think of her every day, but when I think about Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other feast days, I inevitably recall her biscuits and her gravy. Mother was not a fancy cook, and she didn't really care for cooking per se. She fed us good, wholesome meals and stretched my father's paychecks to cover a surprisingly varied menu. Nothing complicated or exotic ever appeared in her kitchen.

I prepare a far greater variety of dishes and inhabit a culinary world that my mother never entered. But I cannot, for the life of me, make biscuits and gravy the way she could.

I gave up trying to match her skill years ago. First to go was making gravy. I watched her make gravy every week as far back as I can remember. Just plain white gravy, made either for chicken/turkey dinners or hamburgers and gravy dinners. I watched her put the fat in the cast iron pan, add a little flour, and stir it up into a roux. She wouldn't have known what a roux was at all, but she made them perfectly. Then she added the appropriate liquid and the remaining flour and boom! There was the gravy. I stirred the final mixture many, many times so that it wouldn't burn, and I always believed that gravy was just that simple to make.  Ha! My first solo Thanksgiving went very well except for the gravy. I could not get rid of the lumps to save my life. A gravy fiasco. I kept trying in subsequent years with no better luck, and then finally succumbed to the use of cornstarch. The last Thanksgiving we spent together, in 2009, she gave us all one final taste of perfect turkey gravy.

Biscuits seemed to appear with equal magic. Once again, I watched her all the time and figured I could do this, too. Could I have asked her for her recipe? Nope. She made biscuits from scratch and used Pillsbury's Self-Rising Flour and milk. I, of course, in my newly-married state, used King Arthur flour and wouldn't touch self-rising. I tried a long succession of recipes for biscuits, never finding a satisfactory, easy one. Biscuits almost completely disappeared from my dinner offerings. Now I use the frozen Pillsbury Grands, which don't even come close to mother's. And really, I should just buy some self-rising flour and have at it. I might achieve success now!

Giblets pertain more to my children than to my mother. Regardless of what gravy fiasco I was dealing with, my gravy always contained giblets. Apparently my oldest son thought that "giblets" was a word I had made up. Just another one of mom's quirks. Imagine my surprise one year when he came running into the kitchen on Thanksgiving, yelling out that giblets were a real thing. I didn't understand at first. He had just heard John Madden on the television, talking about how he was looking forward to getting home and having his giblets and gravy. "Mom! He said giblets!"  We all had a good laugh that day, and, of course, as any good family does, we tell that story every year.

This year will mark a first for our family. We are gathering on the Outer Banks with my sister, brother, and a large number of our Harrison cousins.  No one is making dinner. We are going to Mako Mike's for their full course Thanksgiving dinner. I'm perfectly happy to have someone else prepare it and then adjourn to the beach to digest it while watching the ocean.

Nevertheless, I know both the biscuits and the gravy won't measure up to mother's.