The Wife of A Southern Man: Biscuit Update

For even better biscuits, my friend Ann suggested that I try using buttermilk.  After a few tries, I have decided that my biscuit recipe really does deserve a permanent change in this direction.  Since I am a bit on the frugal side I don't use store purchased my husband tells me that "boughten" isn't a real word  buttermilk, but I simply sour my milk as the first step whipping up a batch of biscuits.  It only takes a few seconds and the results are fantastic.  So with out further ado, the mind blowing change to my biscuit recipe is:

Mix 2 TBL lemon juice in 1/2 cup milk and let stand while mixing the dry ingredients.  The acid in the lemon juice will thicken the milk and cause it to clabber some no you didn't just ruin your milk.  Use this soured milk instead of the 3/4 cup regular milk called for in the original recipe.  It makes the biscuits just a bit lighter and improved the flavor. 

And for any doubters, yes Superman approves. 

The Wife of a Southern Man: Biscuits

Growing up, I thought men lived for homemade cinnamon rolls topped with gooey, melt in your mouth caramel.  Imagine my surprise to meet Superman and learn that he didn't even know cinnamon rolls were suppose to have caramel on top, much less be made at home.  It didn't take me long however to discover that what Southern men live for is biscuits.    Like most of his ilk, my husband would eat biscuits with every meal.  Thankfully, biscuits are much quicker to whip up than cinnamon rolls are.  Although I had to call a halt and cut down on biscuit production when we started going through a pound of butter every week.  Can we say heart attack?

Perfect biscuits can be a bit elusive, but once the secret is mastered they can easily be added to almost any meal.  The true secret to biscuits is in the butter.  It must be BUTTER.  Not margarine or shortening or vegetable oil.  Only real, old fashioned, calorie laden butter works.

 Additionally, the butter must be cold.  Don't even think about warming it up to room temperature and creaming it into the dry ingredients.  Instead, use a sharp knife to cut the required butter into 1/8 inch cubes and crumble it into flour and leavening with clean, dry hands. 

Sissy's Southern Style Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup cold butter (cubed)
3/4 cup cold milk

Mix together dry ingredients in medium sized bowl.  Crumble in butter until well incorporated (the bowl will look like it is full of pea sized crumbs).  Add milk and knead in lightly to create dough. 

On a floured surface roll out dough into a sheet 1/2 inch thick and cut biscuits out with the mouth of a drinking glass.  For quicker biscuits, omit this step and shape dough into balls by hand then flatten to 1/2 disks.  Just keep in mind that these are what Superman calls "ugly biscuits," but they taste just as good. 

Place shaped biscuits 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet.  Once biscuits are panned, place them in  the refrigerator while the oven pre-heats to 475 degrees.  The cold dough produces light, flakey biscuits. 

Bake at 475 for 12 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve right away (with more butter of course). 

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As much work as I have put into my biscuit recipe, it is not perfect.  That market has long been cornered by Bojangles'.  If I can ever get my hands on their recipe, then I will claim to make perfect Southern style biscuits.  For now, I just make good biscuits. 

Baby's first meal out was at Bojangles': she slept, we ate.

The Wife of a Southern Man: Sweet Tea

Here in July, I know we all are feeling a bit patriotic and all warm and fuzzy about the big American family.  Yet as someone who has moved around the country a bit, I can tell you that this big messy family has as many differences as it does likenesses.  Truthfully, that is part of what makes us so beautiful.  Nothing drives it home more than being a northwestern girl married to a southern man.  Our differences in culture and speech allows for a lot of discovery and a even more laughs. 

For me culinary differences has been a great source of adventure.  I am constantly learning how to prepare new southern style dishes and a few of them I have become quite proficient at.  With that in mind, I came up with the idea of a weekly series of posts entitled The Wife of a Southern Man.  Since these southern folk (Superman included) drink sweet tea like us northern folks drink coffee, maybe even  a bit more enthusiastically, I thought that a few pointers on that front would be a great place to start.  No tea will not make or break a marriage, but I sure love the reaction I get every time I hand my husband a glass of perfectly brewed sweet tea. 

The instructions for brewing a good batch of tea can be found every box of tea bags ever manufactured, but there are a few additional hints for consistently perfect sweet tea. Trust me, I learned these the hard way: through trial and error. 

 

Have a picture set aside for tea only. Tea picks up flavors easily and can become tainted very quickly. (If you use a pot instead of a kettle for boiling the water this applies again.)

 

For ideal southern style sweet tea, use 1 1/2 cups sugar per gallon of tea. Be sure to stir in sugar while tea is still nearly boiling hot.

 

Make a fresh batch every 2-3 days, if it lasts that long. Old tea gets cloudy and will develop sludge.

 

Always serve sweet tea ice cold. 

 

You've Got Your Own Bed

Co-sleeping is probably the only early parenting issue Superman and I were unable to come to an agreement on before Onyx was born.  We both knew she had to be breastfed and cloth diapers were just a given, but we had widely different ideas as to where our little girl would sleep.  Each of us had opposite experiences and opinions.  After co-sleeping with four babies, I couldn't imagine laying my baby down in an empty crib to sleep alone.  He had never shared his bed with an infant and insisted that he was not about to start.  When he set the play pen up next to our bed I didn't argue, but in my heart I hoped never to use it. 

On our first night home with the baby, Superman saw my exhaustion and sent me to bed with her. That night I hoped he had resigned himself to sleeping with baby in the middle at least for a few months.  I had only slept a few hours when I realized that my husband was laying on the other side of the bed stiff as a board and wide awake.  Groggily, I asked him what was wrong and the disgruntled man informed me that he was unable to sleep for fear of rolling on our daughter.  A few minutes later he packed up his pillows and moved to the couch.  At the time I was too tired to do anything other than promptly fall back asleep, but when I woke up in the morning to find him gone it was all I could do not to start crying.  I still hoped it would get better, but the next night was the same and just before sunrise I found myself trying to transfer Onyx to the play pen so my husband could come back to bed.  I say "trying" because he had no sooner settled himself back into the bed when she started crying and he headed off to the couch once again. 

If nights were bad, days were worse.  It seemed as if the baby and I were taking refuge in the bedroom while Superman holed up in the living room, leaving the kitchen and bathroom as a shaky no man's land.  While we hadn't so much as argued over the new sleeping arrangement, it seemed as if we were at war.  The distance was excruciating.  I wondered if I had been naïve to think that I could be a good mama and maintain my relationship both.  As much as we loved our new baby, both of us just wanted the us we knew to come back and the only way to get there was to reclaim our bed. 

Night three was exhausting.  I knew that I had to teach our little girl to sleep by herself, but I am not the kind of mama who can let her baby "just cry it out."  Over and over I nursed Onyx to sleep only to have her wake up yelling the moment I laid her down.  We paced the tiny kitchen, snuggled on the couch, listened to music, sat in front of the computer; yet no matter how deeply she seemed to sleep it just wouldn't last.  Finally when I was just about to my breaking point, I laid her down and she simply sighed.  I held my breath just waiting for the insulted screams, they didn't come.  I tip-toed to the bathroom just hoping for enough time to relieve myself, but the silence remained long after I had reemerged and stood over the play pen expectantly. 

Finally, I slipped into the living room to retrieve my husband.  He was skeptical too and we both held our breath while climbing under the covers. With a strange mixture of tiredness and relief I curled up against him and I could feel the tension of the previous days melt away as he wrapped his arms around me.  "That's better," he mumbled into my hair and sighed.  We were back where we needed to be and thank God, the baby was asleep. 

Ames Family Breakfast

Living in my husband's home town, he frequently finds the opportunity to show my a glimpse of his childhood.  The other morning I decided it was high time to show him a glimpse of mine and set out to create one of the ultimate comfort foods of my childhood:  sourdough pancakes. 

Not trusting myself to eyeball the process and come up with a satisfactory "dough" I once again hit up the internet for some direction.  Seriously, what did we do before internet searches?  This recipe had all the right ingredients, so after quickly jotting down the proper quantities of each I headed back into the kitchen and got to work.

I made the doughs just as the recipe instructed up until the moment they went on the hot griddle.  Then instead of using a large scoop of batter, I opted for a much smaller scoop and spread it thin like my Grandpa would have done.  While the doughs were cooking fried several eggs over easy and a stirred up a small batch of Mapleine syrup for a complete George Ames Special:  served with the eggs sandwiched in a stack of doughs. 

Quite honestly, I was in breakfast heaven.  The sourdough pancakes came out just like the ones I remember from my childhood.  Superman wasn't quite so impressed (like me and fried bologna sandwiches), they just didn't taste right to his southern pallet.  He ate them politely, then asked for "real pancakes" next time.  He even turned down my offer for seconds ***SHRUG*** which worked well for me since I wanted the last stack for myself anyway.  I polished off every single one of those doughs and even forgot to save one to eat for an afternoon snack all rolled up with peanut butter and jelly. 

The Nine Month Project

This past week, my domestic excursions have been a bit limited.  I was in the midst of wrapping up a very important project that started last fall and ended this Wednesday morning (10 days excruciatingly behind schedule).  Of course, I am talking about the process of carrying and giving birth to our precious little girl. 

With my Superman and very pregnant

After four pregnancies one would think they had it figured out, but this experience was a completely different ride than any I've had before.  From the first weeks when I experienced morning sickness for the first time to the last week when I found myself laboring for nearly three times longer than in the past, this pregnancy was one of a kind.  It constantly turned me this way and that, leaving me with no idea what to expect. 

I take that back, there was one thing I did learn I could expect with this pregnancy: the love and understanding of my precious husband.  Every step of the way he was there with me, infinitely patient through the ups and downs, and totally on board with three am Icee runs.   Even when my labor wanted to spend three weeks starting and stopping at random intervals he patiently endured, reassuring me of his continual support. 


Mall walking and belly bound to induce labor naturally

 

At nine days overdue the midwives called the hospital to schedule a medical induction, but at the same time implemented some natural methods.  Believing that my labor was starting and stopping due to Miss Onyx shifting away from my cervix during contractions, they bound my belly with a sheet to limit her mobility.  They also suggested Suki's Blends Labor & Delivery tincture, a product available from one of our local herbalists.

A long mall walk and several hours later I started my sixteen hour labor that included a rather uncomfortable drive to Chapel Hill during the morning commute. Superman was incredible patient while maneuvering traffic and risking severe injury to his fingers in my grasp. Back labor in the front seat of a car is not something I recommend adding to your bucket list. 

One hour after reaching the Women's Birth and Wellness Center we were holding our little lovie.   Although I had not planned a water birth, I ended up having her in the bathtub when the midwife suggested it to help ease the discomfort of back labor.  The amount of relief it provided was absolutely amazing and I will be asking for the tub to be filled our next time around. 

 

Miss Onyx at two days old (her Papa wants you to know that I ruined this photo and she did not vomit all over herself)

 

This project wasn't quite what I expected when it begin, but it was incredibly successful and I learned a lot along the way.  The most exceptional lesson I was able to take from this whole experience wasn't taught by the midwifes or through the actual pregnancy process itself.  It was taught by the tenderness and care of my husband.  I learned what it is to truly be loved.