Two Days of Comfort Food

After the long, warm Autumn, the New Year brought us some frigid temperatures. Isn't it true that when it's cold outside our bodies tell us to eat more? And to eat something we refer to as comfort food?

During the week our breakfast is always the same - a bowl of cereal (Special K Protein for Bud and Kellogg's Maple & Brown Sugar Mini Wheats for me) and two cups of coffee each.
Ahh, but Sunday, the day we have our big breakfast - even though we eat it at lunch time - usually eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast and another cup of coffee. Every once in a while I do something different - french toast, scrambled eggs with sausage, once or twice a year, pancakes.

Yesterday I tried a new recipe someone had posted on Facebook last week - a sausage, biscuits and gravy bake. Oh my was it ever good! And the best part is we had half of it left over for another meal.

The recipe called for a pound of sausage cooked and crumbled, but since I usually keep a package of Jimmy Dean fully cooked pork sausage crumbles in the freezer that is what I used. Here is the recipe as I made it:

Preheat oven to 350°. Spray or grease a 9x13 pan.
Cut a 12 oz. tube of buttermilk biscuit dough into 1" cubes and spread evenly in bottom of pan.
Scatter the 9.6 oz. package of sausage crumbles over the biscuits and top that with 1 cup of shredded cheese of your choice. (Cheddar was recommended. I used Colby-jack. Also, next time I will use more than 1 cup.)
Whisk together 6 eggs, a half cup of milk and salt and pepper to taste and pour over the pan.
Make a 2-3/4 oz. package of country gravy mix per instructions and pour over all. (I used two 1.25 oz packages of country sausage flavored gravy mix.)
Bake at 350° 30-45 minutes. Like I said, so good!

Today was a little warmer but still cold. I made ham hock and bean soup (with carrots and onion) and served it with corn muffins (of course!), lemon jello with mandarin oranges, carrot cake for dessert and a cup of hot tea.
Comfort food! My brother-in-law says he uses the jarred, fully-cooked navy beans in his soup and I might try that someday. But though I will use the precooked sausage crumbles in the sausage biscuit gravy bake, I still soak my package of navy beans overnight before starting the ham and bean soup - the way my Mom did.

The cold weather is supposed to last awhile. I'm still so full I can't even think about what kind of comfort food to make tomorrow!