In these days, I think a lot about comfort food. And cooking as inexpensively as I can.

I’m lucky. I have a large garden, so the equivalent of a grocery produce aisle or a farmers’ market is right out the front door in the sideyard!

Nonetheless, cooking with a minimum of ingredients, with the maximum of them unprocessed, is the most important thing we can do.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m all for healthy food, but don’t expect me to give up my comfort food. Or comfort in general.

Which brings us to today’s exploration.

Biscuit and sausage gravy casserole. 

Yep. Biscuit and sausage gravy casserole. I don’t actually know whether I have ever had biscuits with sausage gravy. I just know, that if I had it, I would love it.

So starting with the concept of biscuits with sausage gravy, I started to scheme. I was extravagant as I had some mushroom scones that were left over from our Zooming Newsies event on July 17 at the Arts Nest with Bob and Noni, writers of the original “Newsies” screenplay. I didn’t want the scones to go to waste. I crumbled them up, measuring 2.25 cups, and added 2 cups of leeks to the mix to expand the crumb mixture, and doused the concoction with 5 tablespoons of butter. 

Setting aside 3/4 cup of the mixture, I patted the buttered crumbs into a 9-inch-by-9-inch square pan, pressing lightly, and I baked it for about 10 minutes. 

I sautéed my ground sausage, to which I had added breakfast-sausage spices, then added 2 cups of squash. (I had yellow; zucchini would be fine.) Then I added 3 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour. 

Letting that cook a bit, I measured out 1.5 cups of milk and added it to the pan. After it thickened, I poured the gravy over the crumbs and topped it with the reserved crumb mixture.

It baked for 35 minutes or so, at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

It was good, but it wasn’t biscuits with sausage gravy. 

I began again.

Wanting to cook with the minimum of ingredients and the maximum of unprocessed ingredients, without additives and preservatives, I checked out recipes for “homemade biscuit mix.” This one was perfect: flouron

myfingers.com/homemade-biscuit-mix/#wrm-recipe-container-9303.

The recipe is simple, calling for flour, baking powder, salt and cold, cubed butter.

Cubing the cold butter is very simple. It’s easy to cut, and it sticks together, so you can actually keep rotating the block and cut it into neat 1/4-inch squares. Amazing!

If you have a food processor the process is amazingly simple. Buzz the flour with the baking powder and the salt, and then pulse in the butter. If you don’t have a food processor, mix the flour with the baking powder and salt in a bowl, dump in the butter and use two knives or a pastry blender—if you have one—to slice through the flour mixture, moving your hands diagonally, cutting up and incorporating the flour into the butter. When it looks crumbly, the mix is done. 

(Helpful hint: You could double the recipe and freeze some.)

The recipe calls for using 1.5 cups of the mix and adding 1/2 cup of milk.

Since I wanted to make a family-sized casserole, I used the 3 cups of mix with 1 cup of milk. While mixing the milk and the mix together, gently incorporate the milk into the mix using a fork. The less mixing the better.

Save out 1 cup and spread the remainder into a greased or parchment-lined 9-inch-by-13-inch pan. (I dropped spoonfuls of mix and then spread those out for an easy layer.) Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the meantime, cut up 1 12-ounce package of precooked breakfast sausage. (Three-eighths of an inch with triangular edges is my fav way to cut it up.) If you would rather use uncooked sausage, cook it and cut it up into bite-sized chunks.

Melt 4 ounces of butter, cut up one small zucchini into smaller-than-bite-sized pieces (optional) and sauté a minute or two. Add 3 tablespoons of flour. Stir over heat until a paste is formed. Add 2.5 cups of milk. Cook until thickened. Add sausage. Pour over partially cooked crust. Drop spoonfuls of the reserved biscuit mix on top. Bake for 35-40 minutes until slightly golden.

This one, I gotta say, tasted like sausage and biscuits. You can play with adding different veggies to the gravy if you want to up the nutritional value.

All in all, I used 12 ounces of sausage (about $5; a can of evaporated milk cost $1.75; and a stick of butter cost $1.50) and a bit of flour, baking powder and salt, which are staples in most kitchens. The recipe made 12 servings, and was really tasty, warm or cold. If you wanted it to be more gravy-like, you could increase the milk, flour and butter, respectively. 

Of course, you could use the biscuit mix, make the biscuits and the gravy separately, and be done. 

So many choices with comfort food.