Sausage Gravy Wanted!

I've been craving breakfast sausage lately. Not the kind in links and not the patties, but the loose sausage that you can turn into sausage gravy. I had bought some of the brand Gwaltney, but was so disgusted by what it was that I didn't want to chance buying anything like it again. 

Sausage is a pork product, right? (Usually.) So, since pork is pink, sausage is also pink (maybe darker because of spices). The Gwaltney was pasty and....GRAY! And, it smelled like death. Seriously - it was plain nasty. And, it was FRESH!!! (Meaning - it wasn't even close to its "use by" date.) I know that Jimmy Dean and other national brands have good reputations, but I just didn't want to find out the hard way that I shouldn't have tried them. So, I went looking for some decent "loose" sausage I could use for breakfast.

I thought I'd found some. A pack of ground seasoned pork calling itself "sweet" sausage. It didn't say it was Italian sweet sausage. I know what that is. But, I got it out to make some sausage gravy tonight that I could keep in the fridge to enjoy for a couple of days. I checked the label for what spices were in the sausage, but all it said was "spice blend". Lovely. Time to flip a coin.

So, I opened it and discovered by fragrance and the accompanying recipe UNDER the label that this sausage was Italian seasoned. I'm sure the external labeling was not intentional. Someone just forgot to add "Italian" to the print line.

::disappointment::

Now this was why I made pasta meat sauce. But, I would love to be able to find some breakfast sausage that wasn't in link form that I could brown up as easily as I would ground beef. I know I can get it at the Amish market, but that's way out of my way. Why can't I get it in a regular grocery?? Apparently, in some groceries in this country, you can buy it. I wish I could here.

UPDATE - I did find an easy make at home breakfast sausage recipe that I think I'm going to try. I have all the spices it calls for here, so I just need to buy some ground pork. We shall see!!

photo credit (sausage) - Some rights reserved by Brood_wich (www.flickr.com/photos/brood_wich/)

Sausage gravy over biscuits

photo credit (gravy) - Some rights reserved by @joefoodie (www.flickr.com/photos/montage_man/)