… to pay a casino for its hospitality. Not as dramatically as in Alabama, but definitely humourously.
I went in around 6:00 to play my free game of Keno. That won me $1. I then put that $1 in a slot machine and that won me $10. I played that $10 down to absolutely $0, and that won me $10 in match play for signing up for the player’s club, plus another bonus $10 (please don’t ask me to explain why, these machines mystify me).
To be able to cash out, I had to play the free $20 completely and by the time I did, I was $8.63 up. I cashed that out, went to the buffet, and discovered that the price on the website was wrong and the real price, less the Wednesday night female discount was… $8.63.
Not being a cheapskate, I left a $1 tip to the lady who brought my lemonade and cleared my plates. 😀 So that was my grand expense for the night, a whole dollar!
The buffet was meh. I over estimated how busy it would be on a Wednesday night, so when I got there, a lot of the food had been sitting for a while. I grabbed what looked fresh, which did not involve many vegetables. 🙁
Everything was quite tasty, though. I liked their pork sticky buns and BBQ pork ribs the best. The mashed potatoes were tasty and so was the white gravy to put on them. Yes, white gravy. I had no idea what it was the first time I tried it, so on the next round, I asked a man pouring it all over his plate what it was. I even tried their sushi and it was surprisingly palatable. Oh, and I can’t forget their potato soup. Now that was really yummy!
There was a bunch of other tasty goodies, too, but nothing that totaled up to the $15 they were asking full price (my discount was definitely more than the $5 state on the website!) since the steak and baked potatoes didn’t appeal to me. But I’m not going to complain about a free meal!
The desserts were good; high quality ice cream and assorted pastries. I got one bite each of two kinds of ice cream and one bite of a surprisingly fabulous caramel cheesecake. There was also a guy impressively setting rum-soaked bananas on fire (bananas Foster, I imagine).
I’m off to Google white gravy. My mine is blown by the deliciousness of it. I can just imagine crumbled sausage swimming in it and soaking into my fabulous biscuits.
Post edited to add: white gravy is just a really thick béchamel sauce using pan drippings instead of butter!
Rae, I found your comments about white gravy funny because I had the same reaction when some northerner restaurant put brown gravy on my chicken fried steak – I almost had a stroke – LOL! Growing up in the south, “pan gravy” was all I knew so I was pretty shocked to see that brown gunk all over my beautiful steak. Not nearly as tasty, right? Got a kick out of your description of your mind being blown by the deliciousness of it. 🙂
Oh, I like brown gravy, too! We make it with pan dripping as well. But this was unlike any white sauce I’ve ever had and I thought I knew béchamel! This sauce was smooth and flavourful and I don’t want anyone to tell me how many calories were in it! 😀
Yes, white gravy.
I didn’t know there any other kind until I left home and got out in the world.
Love, love, love white gravy. Don’t eat it very often but love it! There’s a KFC we go to occasionally that has white gravy on its buffet; I usually fill one of the three compartments on my plate with just gravy and eat it with a spoon. 🙂 DQ’s chicken strips basket comes with a small container of white gravy–another occasional treat for me. Just in case you pass either of those en route and get a hankering to stop.
As I said, you call it white gravy, I call it béchamel. I’m used to seeing it over vol-aux-vents (basically chicken pot pie in puff pastry), as the base for salmon in cream sauce, in lasagna to add creaminess, as the base for mac & cheese, etc. For me, ‘gravy’ is brown. You make it with the pan drippings and add tea or coffee and some powdered gravy browner to get it a nice rich colour. I usually put soy sauce in mine for a little extra umami.
I guess you can thank the Acadians (Cajuns) for your white gravy as it came from their French ancestors.
No, no, no…..it is not a white sauce or bechamel, it’s white gravy. There is a difference as you already noted. It should have pepper in it (pepper, not peppers) and is always served with chicken fried steak in Texas unless someone doesn’t know what they are doing as Malia said. A military tradition is S.O.S. (s__t on a shingle) which is ground sausage in white gravy served over toast.
I spent some time Googline white sauce/béchamel/white gravy and, really, there’s no fundamental difference. It’s a cream or milk sauce thickened with roux. The difference is in the fat used and the spices put in it. Your S.O.S. sounds like my vision for my biscuits! 😀
I always put loads of pepper in my cream sauces. MMM. I can’t believe I spent so much time in the southern US this winter and this was my first time encountering this nectar of the gods! Then again, I don’t eat beef, so I haven’t been ordering chicken fried steak.