Skillet Biscuits

To accomplish well a small everyday thing is never a small thing.

c e hollis

Here on the farm we love a big breakfast. Often we fry or scramble eggs. Cut up fresh fruit with yogurt. Occasionally we make waffles or pancakes. Sometimes we opt for omelets, French toast, or egg sausage burritos. One of our favorite breakfasts includes biscuits, bacon, and eggs. Skillet biscuits are baked on high heat in an iron skillet.

To start the recipe preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place a heavy 12 inch iron skillet on a burner and oil and heat it. Now you are ready to begin. Mix together in a bowl: 2 and 3/4 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon soda, 3 teaspoons of baking powder. Now get out a cold stick of real butter and your cheese grater.

Grate the butter into the flour. Beat 2 eggs and add to the eggs 11/3 cup buttermilk. Stir the milk into the flour mix. Stir a very small amount. This is a wet dough so can’t be rolled. Take a bit of dough and roll it in a bowl of flour to coat then plop it into the hot buttered skillet.

Bake for 20 minutes. Brush the tops with melted butter. These spoon biscuits are great with syrup and butter like the farmer was raised eating. I like butter and jelly or pear preserves.

Eggs fresh from the hen house can’t be beat. I scramble about six eggs with a few tablespoons of milk and pour into a greased hot skillet. As they cook fold the eggs––don’t stir. Fry some bacon while the biscuits bake. Serve with fruit and fresh raw milk (icy cold) and black coffee (strong and hot).

Watch the hummers outside the windows while you eat.Try not to be as grouchy and greedy as the hummingbirds. Don’t fight. Enjoy the farm breakfast. Those hot biscuits are salty, the crust fine and crispy and inside soft and delicious. Butter melts in puddles inside. Sooooo good!

This peach jelly is sweet as honey. Honey is fine too and syrup is loved in the south. I like pear and apple jellies and plum jam. My mom-in- law used to make mahaw jelly. She made pear preserves and fig preserves. I learned many of my cooking and canning skills from her. What a great woman she was.

Breakfast is over and its time to check on my chickens and gather the morning eggs. Some hens wait to lay in the afternoon so I make two trips. Chickens are work but more fun than I expected them to be. I talk to them and they scold me when I take the eggs and leave no scraps for them. Now to the garden for a check of the figs and to cut a few late flowers for a windowsill bouquet. Good morning, wonderful world!

Morning on the farm is as busy and as peaceful a place as one can find in the earth.

c e hollis