Soggy Biscuits and Nut Gravy

Hello, old friends, here is a new post! I've been gone a bit, but of course I couldn't stop cooking.

First, a reading update: I've delved deeply into Dick and, I hope, come out with an improved understanding of the interrelationships between possible worlds, psychedelic hallucinogens, time travel, lost love, and the I Ching. I'd advise a shot at The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch if you've spacetime to spare. If not, here's a quick and unrelated webcomic about familial fractures and the moon.

Now, today's recipe: biscuits and gravy, vegan style, avec almonds! (thanks to Steve and Melissa for help with this one).



Ingredients:
A. Soggy Biscuits
3/4 cup almond milk
1T apple cider vinegar
2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup crushed almonds
1T baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup Crisco (or other vegetable shortening)

B. Nut Gravy
2 T olive oil
2 T all purpose flour
2-3 cups almond milk
1/3 cup crushed almonds
1/3 cup soysage, crumbled (Twin Oaks makes a great soysage).
1/2 tsp seasoned salt
1/2 tsp msg
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS (biscuits first):

First, dump the apple cider vinegar into the almond milk. After it sits for ten minutes or so it'll basically be buttermilk. Heat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mix the salt, baking soda, baking powder, and flour together. Then add the vegetable shortening in small chunks (but all at once). Mix until it looks all crumbly, like crumbs:

A food processor is great for this.

Now dump in the butteralmondmilk. Mix that for a bit, add the almonds, and mix (possibly in the processor) until it all forms one big seamless ball. Pop onto a floured surface, and spread out to 1/2 thickness with your fingers.

Using some sort of round-mouthed thingy, cut the dough into disks (really, short sided cylinders):

Then, drop them onto a baking sheet and drop that into your (now-preheated) oven. Set a 12-minute timer and start checking for golden-brownness when it goes off. In the meantime, start on the gravy.

DIRECTIONS (gravy second):
Put the olive oil into a small skillet and heat on medium-low. SLOWLY add the flour, continuously whisking with a whisk (not to be confused with whiskers) or a fork. The flour should brown and emulsify. Once all of the flour has been combined, start to SLOWLY add the almond milk. This part is where you let your creativity shine! Just add milk until things look milky enough. If the gravy starts to look too thick, add more milk! If the mess looks messily milky, turn up the heat a bit and hope it thickens. I usually add a bit more than two cups of milk, but not three cups. It varies, though, so worry not if you go further.

Once you've put in enough milk, stir in the almonds, soysage crumbles, salt, msg, and pepper. If you want things to be especially good, brown the soysage in the pan before you start. Why am I saying this now? Because it's your first time, and you weren't really going to do that anyway. But maybe next time. Maybe next time. Now everything should look like Figure 1.

Figure 1: Gravy!

Now take the biscuits out of the oven:

Figure 2: cooked Biscuits!

Pour Figure 1 on top of Figure 2. Great! You're done!