Best of Old House Kitchen: Sausage Gravy and Biscuits

The next few weeks our family is going to be very busy!  We have two more camping trips, 4-H week, Vacation Bible School (my hubby's in charge of this so of course I'm helping, too!), our 16th wedding anniversary, a birthday celebration, and we have overnight guests coming to visit on two separate occasions!  Crazy busy!  So ya'll will forgive me if I re-post a few things here and there, right?  Good.  I knew you were nice like that!  : )  Monday menu plans will be new each week because, after all, we have to eat and I need a menu.  Tuesday's kitchen tips will be new and we'll keep following the Queen of the Castle series, but the recipes that I post will be our family's favorite ones.  I've taken a poll during one of our latest Dinner Time Quiz Shows so here is a family's favorite.

Even though my family is large --huge by some standards-- we're still not Amish "size". Our Amish neighbors have 11 children! I thought I worked hard cooking for our crowd! They have 11 and some of them are big, strappin' boys! I have a few Amish Country cookbooks that I just love. Flipping through them gives me a glimpse into her life and an appreciation for cooking for a large crowd. From a few of these books I've found (and scaled down, believe it or not!) a great recipe for sausage gravy and homemade biscuits. Hubby loves these biscuits! He's a biscuit snob, so they must be good!
Sausage Gravy
1 lb. sausage
3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
4 1/2 cups milk
Brown and crumble sausage (don't drain it). Add flour, salt and pepper and stir. If the sausage is dry, you may need to add a bit of shortening when adding flour. Add milk while stirring. Heat until it starts to boil and reduce heat and continue to stir until thickened. Makes about 5 cups of gravy.
Homemade Biscuits
4 cups flour

1 tsp. salt
8 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cream of tartar
4 tsp. sugar
1 cup shortening
1 1/3 cup milk
Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles course crumbs. Add milk all at once and stir until dough follows fork around bowl. Roll 1/2 thick.* Use a large glass or a canning jar to cut biscuits. Place on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Makes about 30 biscuits.
*Note: The key to light and fluffy biscuits is not to work the dough too much.