Because when you're married to someone with a film degree from NYU, Oscar Night is like the Super Bowl plus some other... big... sports thing at the same time. Whatever. It's huge!

And, because I've got a whole bunch of you-don't-even-need-to-look-away-from-the-TV-to-eat-it sized foods to prepare, I'm gonna cut to the action, so to speak. So, in honor of tonight's Oscars, I decided to honor one of my favorite Oscar-winning movies of all time.

And that movie is...?

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She was married at 13. She had four kids by the time she was 20.
She's been hungry and poor. She's been loved and cheated on.
She became a singer because it was the only thing she could do.
She became a star because it was the only way she could do it.

I have absolutely no idea why I love Coal Miner's Daughter — for which Sissy Spacek won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 1980 — as much as I do. Hell, I don't even like country music. But I have seen this movie dozens of times and I never tire of it. Something about watching a poor, scrappy woman triumphing over adversity gets me every time. (For that matter, another one of my all-time favorite movies? Norma Rae. Really, if you just swap labor unions for the Grand Ole Opry and they're pretty much the same movie.)

Anyway, a while back, when I saw Loretta Lynn's cookbook, You're Cookin' It Country: My Favorite Recipes and Memories, in the bargain bin, I snapped it up without a second thought. I brought it home, read all the little anecdotes in it, chuckled over the recipe for Butcher Holler Possum... and then I put it on the shelf with my other cookbooks and forgot all about it.

That is, until Turner Classic Movies was showing Coal Miner's Daughter last week, by the time Loretta makes that pie with salt instead of sugar (which she mentions in the cookbook, giving the correct recipe for it), I got it in my head to make nothing but Loretta Lynn recipes for an entire day: biscuits and gravy for breakfast, a fried bologna sandwich for lunch ("Believe me, you're gonna love it," she says), and then for dinner, chicken and dumplins (seriously, dumplins; no G, no apostrophe).

Then I got a good look at all the ingredients. Yipes. Maybe just one fat-laden meal would be enough, so I went with just the biscuits and gravy. Here's the gist of both recipes.

Cat-Head Biscuits

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup buttermilk

Mix the flour and shortening. Add the buttermilk and stir until a dough forms. Place dough on a floured surface and knead until smooth. Drop them by spoonfuls on to a greased baking sheet and cook in a 400º oven for 15 minutes.

Country Sausage Gravy

• 6-8 sausage patties
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 cup milk

Fry the sausage until done then remove from pan. Stir the flour into the sausage drippings. Slowly add the milk. Add crumbled cooked sausage. Stir constantly until gravy is creamy. Serve over biscuits.

And here it is:

Well, Loretta... don't give up your day job because, girl, you are no cookbook author. I've never made biscuits before, but even I was thinking, knead until smooth? really? for biscuits? isn't this going to make them tough?

Wow, did it ever. They were like rocks. Dry, crumbly rocks. The gravy was pretty good, because, well, it's sausage and it's pretty hard to mess up sausage. But, damn, those biscuits. I'm just sitting here, shaking my head sadly, thinking about them.

So, You're Cookin' It Country is going back on the shelf it came from — right up until next year, when basic cable runs Coal Miner's Daughter again and I start to think, gee, maybe I am gonna love a fried bologna sandwich after all.

As always, for more from me, visit my blog at http://gezellig-girl.com.