Santa Wears Combat Boots...

And That’s Why I Can’t Make Biscuits

I know that sounds crazy, but follow me for a few minutes and hopefully it will make sense.

I was born in Minnesota, where, if I may borrow the quote, “It snows nine moths of the year, and hails the other three.” I still consider it my home, mostly. However, my dad joined the Army when I was five and we began the adventure of moving every eighteen months. I never really set down roots and didn’t learn how to make friends. We moved around on the East Coast, living in Kentucky, upstate New York, and Virginia twice. When Dad got out of the Army we kept moving. My sisters and I joked that he was part Gypsy.

We kids grew up, and got jobs, and developed our lives. I went to collage, met Nick, became a good cook, married Nick and had some kids, and we bought a house in Virginia. We have settled. This is the longest that I’ve lived in any one place. I am putting down roots, meeting people, and becoming invested in our community. I like it.

But I still haven’t been here long enough, or still have enough northern blood, to make a decent batch of biscuits (or cornbread, but that one is easier). I had learned how to make breads, sweet rolls, pizzas, and pastas, all of which you are supposed to knead hard for an extended length of time. When you do that with biscuit dough you get bricks. Hard, burnt yet under-cooked, blocks of nastiness.

I understand the concept of not kneading the dough, but I can’t put it into practice yet. My roots just aren’t deep enough, and I have more “northern” to overcome (if you’ve heard me say “roots” you’d understand).

Until then I will rely on canned biscuit dough.

I bought can can of biscuits and a can of crescent rolls. I rolled chocolate chips into the crescents, and it was good. Next time I want to try chocolate and marmalade!

I decided to use the biscuit dough to make chocolate fluffer-nutter for the kids for school. I flattened each biscuit, dropped some chocolate chips, marshmallows, and a spoonful of peanut butter, pulled the edges up and pinched them all together into a ball, and baked them. It was an epic fail. Three of the kids wouldn’t even touch them, on the grounds that it was something new that they had never tried before (even though they love fluffer-nutters). The one child who did try it only and half of one of the two that I’d packed each of them.

Thinking about it, the biscuits might have been too salty. I should try it again with the crescent dough, that might taste better. If I do I’ll try to remember to take some pictures. Right now I need to distract the twins from climbing on the counters and looking for Oreo’s.