Grandma Slade's Bisquits and Sausage Gravy

Cooking is in my blood. I am third in a line of women who carved out their own food niche. Stories about my Grandma Slade are the stuff of legends. Stories about feeding crowds of hungry Polynesians and anyone else who happened to get caught in their path; working at the BYU cafeteria(still not clear what exactly her position was) and making sure all the food was the best honest-to-goodness home cooking those college students could get; working umpteen years managing the BYU Creamery(I still think of Grandma Slade when I walk into an ice cream store and smell that cold dairy smell). Grandma Slade only knew how to cook one way: in bulk. And it didn't matter who you were, you called her Grandma Slade. Now Mom should have written a cookbook. You could throw anything her way, and she'd make it taste good. Okay, one exception-when she made us liver and onions. I just don't think it's possible to make liver and onions pallatable to 4 kids under 10. But I remember sitting down to dinner every night with my family and being excited to eat. Oh, another exception Mom-pear halves stuffed with mayo and cheddar cheese. Shudder. Anyway, I don't have very many stories under my belt, but I do feel the cooking blood coursing through my veins. Grandma Slade showed me how to make some of her trademark foods, and these bisquits were one of them. Grandma could whip up a batch of these and play Canasta at the same time. Someday...

Grandma Slade's Bisquits and Sausage Gravy

Bisquits
2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
4 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
scant 1/4 cup oil

Preheat oven to 375. In a bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Make a well in the middle, and add milk and oil. Stir with a fork until all ingredients are incorporated. Stir in enough additional flour to make the dough easy to handle. Dump out onto a floured surface and knead just until flour is mixed in-dough will be soft but not sticky. Pat out to about 2 inch thick circle, and cut out bisquits with a the top of a glass or a round cookie cutter. I usually get about 7 bisquits after reshaping the scraps and cutting out more. Drop 2 tablespoons of butter into a 9 inch round cake pan, and put in oven until butter is melted and bubbly. Remove pan from oven. Take bisquit rounds and place in melted butter, flipping them over so top sides are buttered. Return to oven and bake until bisquits are just beginning to brown, about 15 minutes.

Gravy
1/3 lb sausage
flour
milk

Brown sausage in skillet, breaking up into little pieces. When good and brown, add enough flour to coat sausage when stirred around but still moist, maybe 1/4 cup. Pour in milk, stirring well. I just pour in enough to make the amount of gravy I want. Generously salt and pepper, along with adding a small spoonful of sugar. Stir gravy until thickened up; remember, gravy will get thicker as it cools, so make it a little runnier than you want it. Serve over a piping hot bisquit that's been split.