One thing that has enriched my life is the abundance of family stories. My siblings and I heard all kinds of tales about our extended family, Dad’s adventures in the army, things that happened in church; the list could go on and on. Through the years, we developed favorites and would beg our parents to tell them. Some of the incidents have even found their way into my column. And, of course, I have retold many of them to my grandchildren.
A favorite of granddaughter Vivian is what she refers to as “the cow in the kitchen” story. If she is here spending very much time with me, she requests to hear it again. So when all my grandchildren were here on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, we were trying to get a picture of all of them. Vivian, as is par for the course, refused to smile. In order to see if I could get her to let go of her frown, I gave all the kids a rendition of Vivian’s well-loved tale.
The next Monday, I was getting out books that I thought my daughter Molly’s younger two children, Lincoln and Melody, would enjoy reading. Melody asked for a cow book. Unsure what she meant, I began to question her. Her mom and I were puzzled until we realized she thought the account of the cow in the kitchen had come from a book. It was quite amusing to Molly and me; Molly informed Melody that there was no book with that story in it, as it had really happened.
Although this particular adventure was previously published in “Cooks’ Corner,” it appeared several years ago. Thinking my readers might enjoy it again, I am going to repeat it:
My mom said that sometimes Granny Grace (her mother) got lazy. She did her laundry on the back porch; after it was finished, Granny Grace would take the sudsy water and use it to scrub the kitchen floor, making it slick and shiny. (I don’t know about anyone else, but to me, using laundry water to clean the kitchen floor doesn’t sound like something a lazy person would do. The thought of doing laundry “by hand” wears me out just to think about it.) One day while she was scrubbing she asked Herbert (Mom’s older brother) to bring the cow up to the back porch so she could milk it without having to walk all the way out to the barn.
After the kitchen floor was sparkling clean, the cow managed to find its way in the kitchen door. However, it could not manage to stay up on all fours because the floor was so slippery. When relating this story, it was all Mom could do to finish telling us what happened because she kept laughing so much. The cow would try to stand up; she would get one leg straight, but the other legs would go every which way, and down she would go. Of course, being a cow, there was more happening than just a lot of mooing. Someone forgot to tell her that the kitchen was not a proper place to make cowpies. This made the floor even more slippery than it was already. Mom finally calmed down enough to say that it took several people to help the cow stand up so it could be removed from the kitchen.
And there you have it – one of Vivian’s favorite family stories. Maybe I need to make a book of them so that they won’t be lost to the next generations. However, a lot of the fun is in the telling. I still envision my mother struggling with laughter each time we convinced her to re-tell the incident, even though she had repeated the tale quite often. A significant part of my memory of family stories is the picture I have in my mind of the person spinning the tale and their reaction to what they were remembering. Seeing it in written form just isn’t quite the same.
Besides being well-loved for her storytelling, my mother was in demand (by her family) as a biscuit maker. She didn’t really follow a recipe, she just started out with White Lily® self-rising flour and went on from there. Sometimes she made drop biscuits; other times she cut them out with a biscuit cutter. There were even times she mounded the whole amount of dough onto a cookie sheet, flattened it out, and baked it that way.
My late hubby loved my mother’s biscuits, but I never developed the knack of making them like she did. Mine were much more consistent when I followed the recipe on the back of the flour sack.
Since September is National Biscuit month, here are a couple of recipes I have tried. When looking for ingredients for the Rye Biscuits all I could find in the grocery was dark rye flour; although the results were good, I thought the flavor was too heavy on the rye side of things. I provided a suggestion in the recipe of how to tone it down. Other than that, they were pretty tasty.
Rye Biscuits
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 cups rye flour*
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
3/4 cup shortening
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
*If using dark rye flour, you may want to decrease amount to 1 cup and increase all-purpose flour to 2 cups.
Combine the first 5 ingredients. Mix well. Cut in shortening with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add milk, stirring until dry ingredients are moistened. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface; knead lightly 8 to 10 times.
Roll dough to 1/2-inch thickness; cut with 2-inch biscuit cutter. Place biscuits on ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Yield: about 15 biscuits.
Black Pepper-Bacon Biscuits
1/3 cup cooked and crumbled bacon
1 teaspoon black pepper
3-3/4 cups self-rising soft-wheat flour*
1/2 cup cold butter
1-1/4 cups buttermilk
Self-rising soft-wheat flour
2 tablespoons melted butter
Combine bacon and pepper with flour in a large bowl.
Cut butter with a sharp knife or pastry blender into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Sprinkle butter slices over flour; toss butter with flour mixture. Cut butter into flour with a pastry blender until crumbly and mixture resembles small peas. Cover and chill 10 minutes. Add buttermilk, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface; knead 3 or 4 times, gradually adding additional flour as needed. With floured hands, press or pat dough into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle. Sprinkle top of dough with additional flour. Fold dough over onto itself in 3 sections, starting with 1 short end. (Fold dough rectangle as if folding a letter-size piece of paper.) Repeat entire process 2 more times, beginning with pressing into a 3/4-inch-thick dough rectangle.
Press or pat dough to 1/2-inch thickness on a lightly floured surface; cut with a 2-inch round cutter, and place, side by side, on a parchment paper-lined or lightly greased jelly-roll pan. (Dough rounds should touch.)
Bake at 450 degrees for 13 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven; brush with melted butter.
*I used White Lily Self-Rising Flour.