Central Illinois Vegan

If you're like me, you're vegan and you desperately miss some breakfast foods like omelets, waffles, huevos con chorizo, and of course biscuits and gravy. Thanks to Lightlife's Gimme Lean sausage substitute, at least you can have biscuits and gravy back.

Vegan biscuits and gravy has got to be one of my favorite meat substitute dishes. First, start by finding a biscuit recipe. I usually just throw biscuits together, they're very simple and consist of only five ingredients:

• Salt
• Baking powder
• Flour
• Earth balance
• Soy milk or almond milk

I also often use nutritional yeast flakes to add a bit of flavor and B vitamins. I usually mix the earth balance into the dry ingredients and then just wet the mixture with soy milk until I get a nice sticky dough consistency. I usually make drop biscuits because they're quicker. I bake my biscuits at about 400ºF for 12-15 minutes.

Now we get to decidedly the best part: the gravy!

• 1-4tbsp flour (depending on how thick you like your gravy, for me it varies depending on my mood... I'm very moody)
• 2tbsp cooking oil (I like to use rapeseed/canola oil)
• 1/2 tube of Lightlife's GimmeLean sausage substitute
• 3cups soy or almond milk
• Salt & pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. You want to mix the flour into the milk first to avoid clumps. To do this you want to take your flour and pour it into your milk and whisk it until smooth and then set it aside.
2. Heat your oil up (remember, cold oil on hot pan, cold food on hot oil) and then add in your sausage substitute.
3. Add salt and pepper to taste, chopping up the sausage substitute as you cook.
4. Once the sausage is browned and starting to stick to the pan (a little sticking to the pan is a good thing) add in your milk and flour mixture.
5. I really like to grind in some fresh black pepper here, it adds a lot of really tasty spicy character to the gravy.
6. Using a spoon or spatula, scrape the bottom of the pan where some of the sausage sub has stuck to get it off into the gravy, this adds a little color and some nice tasty bits back into the gravy kinda like drippings would normally add to a non-vegan gravy.
7. Cook until on a medium-to-low flame until your gravy has reached your desired consistency
8. Serve hot.

This is not the cheapest dish in the world, but boy is it tasty. While healthy vegans should not base their diets on processed foods or meat substitutes, it's always nice to have a little comfort food from time to time.