Adorn, Not Scorn, the Biscuit!

Lord knows I have eaten my share of biscuits: buttermilk biscuits, canned biscuits, biscuits twice fried in a pan with honey and butter, gravy biscuits, ham biscuits, jelly biscuits, plain old butter biscuits-- there are as many biscuits to love nearly as folks to eat them.

But I'm a modern mountain woman and with all of this Atkins, low carb, paleo hot mess that is permeating our culture, the biscuit has taken a sort of back seat to things like, oh, a lightly cooked lean steak.  But back in the earlier part of last century, the biscuit (and cornbread too, but that's for another day) was a staple-- the biscuit powered the men and women that raised large farming families and it sustained generations of carb-addicts who never once had a problem with troublesome belly fat.  Well, it did need to be said.

Biscuits were the staple, of course and women could whip them up in no time flat.  Some people have asked me if mountain people just don't like sliced white bread.  Well the answer is, they generally love it.  But years ago, there were no bakeries in these parts.  So people had to make their own bread which resulted in biscuits and cornbread because they were easy to make with baking soda and didn't require the yeast of the bakery breads.  Even the lard was rendered on the farm (but later turned to butter, then Crisco, then oil).

When my daddy went to school, he and his brothers and sisters would be embarrassed of their biscuits-- having biscuits to eat meant that your family couldn't afford sliced bread.  Today in the South the tables have turned and sliced bread at a proper southern meal is akin to blasphemy!  Gimme a cat head biscuit (biscuit as big as a cat's head) or a slice of cornbread any day over that yeasty, fancy, northern bread (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course).

The best way to eat biscuits is hot and fresh out of the oven.  But did you know the biscuit is a gift that keeps on giving?  Yep.  After the biscuits are left over, the best way to make them is to prepare them in a frying pan with sorghum, honey and butter-- these are homemade honeybuns!  Much better than those freakish things with a shelf-life of 50 years.  My roof isn't even rated to last that long!

Here's a link to a very easy to understand recipe for baking buttermilk biscuits from a website I trust.