Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Breakfast for lunch

I was very busy this morning taking care of dogs, chickens and the garden before I even got breakfast, so I ate breakfast for lunch. I wanted biscuits but I don't have enough milk right now to make biscuits, but I do have beer! I've made beer bread before so why not beer biscuits? I looked on-line to see if anyone else has had that idea, and, of course, they have - notably Paula Dean, or perhaps her brother, since they are called Bubba's Beer Biscuits. I used her recipe and a couple of others as a guide and came up with the following recipe of my own. With my recipes you have to insert the word "about" in front of every ingredient line, because I'm not really a meticulous about amounts. When I was a kid my mother had me using the back of a table knife to carefully even off the top of every ingredient measurement, but perfection isn't really my style.

Beer Biscuits
2 cups of bread flour
2 heaping teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 can of beer
1 egg

My mix came out more like batter than dough. If you want a stiffer dough you can adjust to your taste.

I have flashback moments in the kitchen to memories of my grandmother every once in a while. She was my primary influence in both cooking and gardening. I had one of those today. I started out using 2 pastry knives (small spatulas? - I'm really not sure what they are called - wooden handle with a long, flat, metal - not sharp - blade?) to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. I said to myself, myself not being a patient person, "this blows, a fork would be quicker." As I mashed on the butter bits to blend them into the flour I could see my grandmother doing the same thing, only I think she used either margarine or shortening by the time I was old enough to watch her cook. The patience I could remember on her face as she gently and carefully mashed the fork tines into the flour reminded me that taking the time to do it right makes it better. I could see her smiling at me, handing me the bowl and fork and saying, "here, you try it" while she moved aside, probably to do something less tedious while I finished the task. She was patient, not stupid. If you've got a kid in the kitchen watching you cook, put her to work!

 So for lunch I had beer biscuits with my over-easy eggs (laid this morning), a few leaves of lettuce (picked this morning) and basil peach jam left from a batch I made last fall. Yum! (Okay, now I'm just showing off.)