#9 To The Moon and Back
Biscuits And Gravy
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Number Nine, To The Moon and Back
Biscuits and Gravy
We recently watched a Facebook reel, and it reminded us that we haven’t blogged about the amazing food we had in America. The reel is about British High School students trying Biscuits and Gravy, and they also tried Southern Fried Chicken and Iced Tea. Later in this episode I’ll tell about our first encounter with Biscuits and Gravy.
Here is the link below for the Facebook reel of the British Students. https://www.facebook.com/jollyvids/videos/774896017198207/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v
We love food. All kinds of food. There isn’t much we wouldn’t try and there isn’t much we don’t like. Someone on the inside even has a bucket list adventure of trying deep fried locusts which are grasshoppers, dipped in wild honey. Don’t ask me.
Within our System there is a Chef called Mojo who is the one who loves to cook. They come Front when our System is at peace, they have a pretend international accent, and they love to take over the entire kitchen with their creations. Multimes says Mojo reminds them of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets by Jim Henderson. We’ve always loved that dude. I think Mojo is a little bit like that too.
Below is an image from wallpaper access.com of the Swedish Chef.
This episode is part one about our encounters with the American palate or more relevantly the Midwest palate and cuisine.
Ahhh American food, it’s pleasure for the taste buds and satisfaction for the belly.
Before going to America, we would have thought Hamburgers, Southern Fried Chicken, and Hot Dogs would have been the American cuisine, now we can add Barbecue as in Ribs, Burritos bowls, Tacos, Cob Salad and the infamous Biscuits and Gravy.
Part way through our trip, Multimes and I happened upon the quaint little town of Branson, it was there that our System experienced our first ever American Diner.
Okay, it’s probably about time that anyone hearing or reading this, might like to know that we, Unpretending Spontaneous, have lived a very sheltered life. We have not been to many places at all and even the city we live in is considered a large country town. So, to us an American Diner was a huge adventure.
Foods are a huge adventure.
Hash browns are a huge adventure.
The Hash browns we get in Australia, the ones you get at Maccas (MacDonalds). You know their solid. But the hash browns we got in America, they were like grated bits of potato cooked into this oh amazing just delicious mouth-watering potato yumminess. I don’t know why I just said that.
When we were a teen during the early 1990’s, there was a show called Twin Peaks. It was an unusual series about solving a particular crime in an American town. There was this investigator, named Agent Cooper and he spent a lot of the time at the town’s diner where he ate cherry pie and drank good black coffee, and got to know all the people in the town so he could work out the crime. Anyway Kyle MacLachan, is the one who played Cooper, and he did such an impressionable job of selling the concept of diners, coffee and pie to this young teen at the time.
We’ve also grown up watching many American movies that had diners in them, and you know back in the day, like it’s a little bit sexist I suppose. The waitress, or it could have been a waiter, or a wait person, they walk around wearing one of those like half aprons around their waist, holding a coffee pot in their hand and refilling the patron’s coffees as they walk around. It is a such a real thing, it actually happens. So many in our System were jumping up and down on the inside with excitement as our waitress at the Branson Cafe filled up our coffee cup, even though we didn’t want to drink move coffee, we just did it anyway because it was such an experience.
Below are three images. The first one is of the street in Branson where the Branson Cafe was. And then the second image is the outside of the Branson Cafe, and it is so cool it is like established in 1910. We love that about America, there’s a lot more…, a lot of really old stuff. Oh, there’s a lot of old stuff in Australia too but it (old stuff in America) just seems a little bit older.
The third image is of the inside of the cafe, and you can see the booths, see the booths on either side. Oh man, booths. I’m gonna write about booths in the next episode because they are brilliant, you can hear so much more of your own conversations. Anyway, let’s not talk about that. These photos were taken by Unpretending Spontaneous.
And it was at the Branson Cafe that we experienced our first ever Biscuits and Gravy.
As with the British high schoolers in the Facebook reel, biscuits to Aussies are thin, sweet and crunchy treats similar to what Americans call cookies, although if you had a chocolate chip cookie that would be a cookie, just to confuse everyone.
Gravy in Australia is a dark brown rich and thick pouring sauce perfect with roast meat or potatoes, and chips you know, hot chips (fries), oh so good.
The images below are on unsplash.com. The first is an Anzac biscuit being dipped into a cup of coffee, it’s a thing but personally we don’t dip our biscuits into coffee. The second image looks like some sort of roast meat, and eggs, and vegetables. You can see the rich gravy being gently poured onto the meat so you can see its sauce like consistency and it’s darkness. The third image is a picture of scones with jam and cream. Scones are doughier and they are not sweet, that’s why you need jam and cream with it. It’s often served with hot tea, basically if you go somewhere, you could have scones with jam and cream and Devonshire tea. It’s a very English type thing and Australia having been a colonial country has adapted a lot of the British and Great British and the whole big around like Scottish and Irish… and I’m just rambling anyway, and I don’t know what I just said.
So back to the Branson Cafe.
We had gone there for brunch, and we had heard about Biscuits and Gravy and knew the biscuits were similar to scones, so we were very excited to try them.
As the plates were laid out before us, we looked in surprise at the gravy, because it was a whitish colour, like béchamel sauce, but it was lumpy and very thick with the consistency of a viscose soup or stew.
Much to Multimes’ amusement we took up a spoon, scooped some of the gravy from the bowl and went to put it in our mouth. We had assumed one eats biscuits and gravy like bread and soup, tearing off a small section of the biscuit to eat it in between mouthfuls of the gravy.
In astonishment, we listened and followed Multimes instructions to slice the biscuit open like a baked potato and add the gravy over the top so that it almost drowned the biscuit.
Then we had a taste and what a taste!
The light buttery, flakey, biscuit had almost a pastry like consistency without the floury doughiness of a scone. It had a bit of sweetness to it. Then the gravy was almost to die for, soft, and hot and creamy with small pieces of minced meat, I think. I certainly had found my comfort food in America, actually American food is my comfort food.
We are yet to try to making biscuits and gravy here, back in Australia. Perhaps Mojo will begin his own food blog page and we’ll record and write as he goes. Biscuits and Gravy will be number one on his list.
There are two images below, one is the gravy and a biscuit beside it, as it was placed in front of us. Then the other one (image) is the gravy has been put on top of that cut up biscuit, it was really delicious. I don’t think we ate the whole thing because we also had hash browns, bacon and I think buttermilk pancake. But yeah, we ate a lot when we were in America, it was absolutely amazing.
So, there you have part one. Part two of this episode will hopefully come out in the next couple of days. I haven’t been on top of my posts as much as I have in the past, I’ve been really slack. Which means…, well slack kinda means lazy but I’ve been really busy trying to get life together but who knows, anyway let’s not talk about that.
I need to get on with posting more often because I have about five half written pieces that I want to get up. And Spencer hasn’t done any Spencer Reads for ages, life has just become very busy.
We would love to hear any peoples comments they have on how they eat biscuits and gravy, or any comments about biscuits and gravy in itself, or diners. Or perhaps if you have a recipe of biscuits and gravy and you’d like me to try it out. We’d really like to do that.
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I remember that! Yous were scooping up that gravy and trying to eat it like pudding! 🤣
Oh my ♥️ yous! It was so adorable.