This morning I had fixed in my mind peanuts. Had intended to scribble a few lines about raising and eating them, but when I began pondering those hot, summer or autumn?, days when we dug them up, biscuits came to mind.
To begin with, the name is a little snooty for a poofed up handful of flower, talking Southern-style soda biscuits here. Although soda need not even be in your recipe, they’re pretty much thought of as soda biscuits. My recipe is a little flour (white), baking powder, salt, a little grease (sausage or bacon will do), milk. I add an egg just to defy the sawbones who nags me about cholesterol.
Doesn’t sound much like the biscuits Mama made but they taste just fine. Mama’s biscuits were light and a little doughy in the center, just right for a slice of butter. Of course back then, we had a couple of cows, so we had fresh made (though frozen to preserve) butter.
Butter was safe to eat by the spoonful because there weren’t any labels painted on its side proclaiming lethal content. Mama didn’t serve it up in a skinny little stick, it sat stout in the middle of the table elbowing aside the salt and pepper. Maybe that’s what set my mouth to watering, it reminded me of ice cream. Wish we’d had enough left over to waste on cheese.
The best biscuit of all, though, like pizza and lasagna, maybe vengeance too, is best served cold.
Mama would place leftover biscuits on a plate in the fridge. My brothers and I snuck in and stuffed our pockets full, then headed out for the fields. Cold biscuits on a hot day — better than that first kiss, Saturday afternoon hamburgers, meatloaf gravy or ice cream.
Well, maybe the first kiss, but not the second.
Tags: biscuits, butter, kiss, Southern biscuits
