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Monday, October 28, 2019
The Observer & Baker City Herald
TRASH TALK
A Simple Sausage Gravy
BARBARA O’NEAL
Rethinking
how we
(over)use
plastics
We have talked at length in this
column about the many ways plastic
is harmful to us and our environment
and we have talked about the three
Rs — reduce, reuse and recycle. But
plastic recycling is limited and so are
our options for reducing and reus-
ing plastic. Almost everything in the
grocery store, and many items in the
hardware store are encased in at least
one layer of plastic. We are awash in
plastic in our own homes. It is time
to talk about some other Rs, namely
redesign and rethink.
Obviously you and I cannot rede-
sign packaging, but we can advocate
with our purchases and with our pens.
Both of which are working, at least
incrementally. As consumer prefer-
ences change and as the fi ght against
plastic pollution intensifi es around
the world, a cottage industry of plastic
alternatives has emerged. These efforts
are often legitimately sustainable and
better for our future, such as tote bags
that replace single-use plastic bags.
Sometimes, however, what seems
groundbreaking at fi rst glance is not
upon closer inspection. Not all plastic
alternatives are created equally, and it’s
often confusing to draw distinctions.
For me, the “biodegradable plastic”
and “bio” plastic claims are the hardest
to decipher. Turns out, for good reason.
Many plastics that carry the biodegrad-
able label degrade only in very particu-
lar and controlled environments, which
do not include your trashcan, home
compost pile, or our landfi lls.
See Plastics/Page 2B
BETWEEN
THE ROWS
WENDY SCHMIDT
Let’s get a
little nutty
This is the time of year for fruitcake
and pumpkin bread to be perfuming
houses. A time for spices, warmth and
never drinking coffee without something
sweet to go with it.
Walnuts are a big part of baking in
my house. It was interesting to me that
English walnuts are native to Asia.
They are also good for our health.
• Walnut (Juglans). Juglandaceae.
These deciduous trees are usually large
and spreading, with leaves divided into
leafl ets. The nuts are oval or round in
fl eshy husks. English walnut is grown
as an orchard tree in the West. Native
walnuts are sometimes planted as shade
trees with the edible nuts as a bonus.
Walnuts are notorious as hosts for
aphids. Expect the trees to host the
pests with the honeydew that falls from
them. You shouldn’t plant the trees
where they will overhang patios or
parking areas.
• Southern California black walnut
is native to Southern California. It’s a
small tree, growing 15 to 30 feet. Leaves
have 9 to 19 leafl ets. Rough nuts with
good fl avor but thick, hard shells. It is
drought-tolerant and will grow in poor
soil.
• Butternut (J. cinerea). Zones 1-9. A
50- to 60-foot tree native to the eastern
U.S. Nuts are elongated. Flavor is good
but the shells are hard. It needs only a
moderate amount of water in summer.
See Nutty/Page 2B
Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune/TNS
Serve the gravy over biscuits, whole or split, as you prefer.
G OOD G RAVY
By James P. DeWan
Chicago Tribune
What’s white and lumpy and hails from
the American South? Besides me, I mean.
That’s right. It’s our old pal sausage gravy,
the dish for which the adjective “mucilagi-
nous” was invented.
Sausage gravy is so much more than the
spackley white glop of our misshapen youth,
and today, we plumb its sublimity.
WHY YOU NEED TO LEARN THIS
What, I didn’t have you at “spackley
white glop”? OK, then, howzabout, besides
being delicious and iconically comforting,
it’s also one of the easiest things to make
ever. And, as if that’s not enough, it’s just
as easy to make a huge pile of it as it is to
make a couple of servings. Trust me: If your
memory’s as good as my elephant’s, you’ll
remember this the next time the choir drops
in for Sunday brunch and they’ll literally be
singing your praises. Literally.
THE STEPS YOU TAKE
Most of us know sausage and gravy as
the more liquid half of that classic breakfast
food, biscuits and gravy — the other half I’m
guessing I don’t need to tell you? You’ll also
fi nd it napped with love across fried chicken,
chicken-fried steak or pork chops.
By tradition, sausage gravy is a very sim-
ple preparation — pretty much just sausage,
a thickening agent and a liquid. Let’s take a
moment to examine those ingredients:
First, the most important ingredient: the
thickener.
I’m kidding, of course.
It’s the sausage. Now, what sausage you
use is entirely up to you. Most iterations
employ the Common American Breakfast
Sausage (CABS), a fresh pork number fl a-
vored typically with a notable dose of sage.
On the other hand, you, being the soul of
intrepidity, might want to set sail for Other
Sausage Land and concoct your sausage
gravy with something a bit more adventur-
ous. Something like hot Italian sausage
or a Cajun andouille. You could even try a
(Yipes!) blood sausage like kishka, morcilla
or Irish black pudding. Go ahead: It’s your
funeral.
If it were up to me — which, as we’ve
just established, it’s not — I’d use generic
bulk breakfast sausage. If, for some reason,
you can’t fi nd bulk sausage — like, say, you
live on the planet Zebulorp 7 — purchase
uncooked links or patties. Slit the links
down the side to remove the sausage from
its casing. Then, before cooking — and you
can do this with patties as well — crumble
the sausage like the Fates did my youth-
ful aspirations. If you’re using a precooked
sausage like andouille, simply chop it into
bite-size pieces.
Now, about that thickener: Flour is most
common, turned into what our Gallic pals
call “roux” by cooking it in fat. The fat comes
mostly from the sausage, though it never
hurts to throw in a bit of butter as well.
Finally, the liquid. Traditionally, sausage
gravy uses milk. Now, if you’ve eaten lots
of biscuits and gravy, you know that the
consistency of the gravy slips often to the far
end of the American Standard Glop Scale
(ASGS). If I had a nickel for every time I’ve
been served a gravy that’s so thick I could
use it to wallpaper my elephant, or my
elephant’s bedroom.
That high level of gloppitude stems from
the fact that starch thickens milk more
than it does liquids like stock or water. Don’t
worry about why that is. (The short answer:
Science!) Just know that if your gravy is too
thick, you have the power to add more liquid
and thin it out.
Or, you could be like me (and who doesn’t
want that?) and start with stock instead of
milk. Not only is it less likely to englopulate,
but, because stock has less fat, you’ll get a
much lighter end product. (See recipe.) You
can still fi nish it with a splash of cream for
richness.
Here’s what you do, to feed four to six
people:
1. Brown a pound of sausage in a little fat,
then remove it from the pan to a clean bowl.
See Gravy/Page 3B
Sticks and sweets: Philippines street food
By Daniel Neman
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
All you need to know about
banana cue is that it is caramel-
ized, fried banana, served on a
stick.
Its cousin, camote cue? That’s
caramelized, fried sweet potato,
served on a stick.
I know a guy who doesn’t like
sweet potatoes. “There is nothing
you could do to a sweet potato
that would make me like it,” he
has said.
Even deep fry it and caramel-
ize it?
“Even that,” he said.
So he has no interest in
camote cue, although I still think
he would enjoy it if he tried it.
And that’s fi ne. It just means
more camote cue and banana
cue for the rest of us.
Both of the cues, banana
and camote, are popular street
foods in the Philippines. You are
especially likely to fi nd them
as a mid-afternoon snack, or
meryenda. I imagine they are
particularly popular among chil-
Hillary Levin / St. Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS
Fried sweet potato with brown sugar, on a stick.
dren coming home from school,
but adults adore them, too.
Best of all, for our purposes,
they are incredibly easy to make.
They may be a little bit messy,
have a belly full of banana cue or
especially if you tend to be a
camote cue.
messy cook anyway, like me. But
See Sweets/Page 2B
clean-up is a pleasure when you