My Aunt Bobbi is a lady much like my Mom, both in physical appearances and often in attitude and personality. Grandmotherlyness has taken hold of them both, and their homes are filled with the signs of little ones. The main differences being in sheer volume on my aunt's behalf, as her adult children have given her more grandchildren, and now great grandchildren, than my brother and I could manage mathematically.
My Aunt Bobbie and her husband are quite easily my favorite relatives, though there are some others I would call my favorites too. I suppose love can work that way, huh?
One of my favorite things about my Aunt is her cooking style. She was well known for making a pan of biscuits, and whatever was left over in the morning would sit under a cake pan in the afternoon until they were eaten, and they were always eaten. She seemed to make them in just a few minutes, with nothing more than a few hand motions near a jar of flour and a minute in the oven.
For my recent visit to her home, I called ahead to ask if she would teach me to make biscuits. She said I should just go buy them at Wal-Mart, as that was what she had started doing. But during my visit, she relented and Sunday morning poured flour into a stainless steel bowl and showed me how it's done.
It's less accurate to call it a recipe than to borrow a friend's phrase for her grandmother's sausage dressing, "more a collection of ingredients thrown together strategically." I was naive to believe I would get a measurement of anything. "here, add this." was followed by "more"
MyFella had pre emptively suggested I take measurements out of her hand, but how do you do that with liquid? And so, I learned from her in much the same way I imagine she learned from my grandmother - with a primer and words to go home and practice.
Which I did, this Tuesday morning. I had the ingredients just as she had given me (good flour is important, but apparently generic vegetable oil is fine). And I did it.
And I am proud to tell you they tasted like biscuits. They did not necessarily look like biscuits. They were small and unsmooth. But the bread inside the golden crust was warm and fluffy.
I was humbly proud.
I plan to practice again this Saturday morning, as MyFella will be in town. It's a good time to practice, and I want to make sure this Tuesday was not a fluke. And I need to get them bigger and more fluffy like biscuits.
Wish me luck!
My Aunt Bobbie and her husband are quite easily my favorite relatives, though there are some others I would call my favorites too. I suppose love can work that way, huh?
One of my favorite things about my Aunt is her cooking style. She was well known for making a pan of biscuits, and whatever was left over in the morning would sit under a cake pan in the afternoon until they were eaten, and they were always eaten. She seemed to make them in just a few minutes, with nothing more than a few hand motions near a jar of flour and a minute in the oven.
For my recent visit to her home, I called ahead to ask if she would teach me to make biscuits. She said I should just go buy them at Wal-Mart, as that was what she had started doing. But during my visit, she relented and Sunday morning poured flour into a stainless steel bowl and showed me how it's done.
It's less accurate to call it a recipe than to borrow a friend's phrase for her grandmother's sausage dressing, "more a collection of ingredients thrown together strategically." I was naive to believe I would get a measurement of anything. "here, add this." was followed by "more"
MyFella had pre emptively suggested I take measurements out of her hand, but how do you do that with liquid? And so, I learned from her in much the same way I imagine she learned from my grandmother - with a primer and words to go home and practice.
Which I did, this Tuesday morning. I had the ingredients just as she had given me (good flour is important, but apparently generic vegetable oil is fine). And I did it.
And I am proud to tell you they tasted like biscuits. They did not necessarily look like biscuits. They were small and unsmooth. But the bread inside the golden crust was warm and fluffy.
I was humbly proud.
I plan to practice again this Saturday morning, as MyFella will be in town. It's a good time to practice, and I want to make sure this Tuesday was not a fluke. And I need to get them bigger and more fluffy like biscuits.
Wish me luck!
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