Early Morning Manna at Grandma’s
Grandma greeted the sun’s first peek through curtains
while the household slept. Her biscuits appeared
on the breakfast table as the men sat to eat.
I loved the fresh-baked aroma wafting
from her wood-burning stove.
Butter churned from fresh sweet cream, skimmed
from Grandpa’s dairy,
dripped out corners of mouths
after biting into the warm chewiness
of one, then another.
Imitating Uncle Gray, I swirled butter into molasses,
spread a dollop before each bite.
When finished, the men got up. Left. No one uttered:
Thank you. Delicious. Please excuse.
Then Grandma fixed her plate and ate …
… the only time I saw Grandma eat.
Later, she dish-toweled the biscuit platter,
refrigerated sides, milk, and meat. After supper,
the little and quite large piggies feasted
on her biscuits in their pen,
along with leftovers scraped from plates
and serving bowls—not seen again.
At home we ate a prefab version popped out
of cardboard tubes, buttered with plastic-tasting oleo.
No one asked for seconds.
—D.C. Buschmann “Nature: Human & Otherwise” (poetry book can be found on Amazon)
I hope you enjoyed the poem! I have so many wonderful memories of eating Granny Gazzie’s good cooking. And I even have some of Mamaw Marie although she died when I was in 5th grade. I remember her corn was so good. And she made the best sweet tea I’ve ever had.
I’ve eaten the prefab version of biscuits D.C. mentions. We call them whack-ems. I’d much rather have homemade biscuits.
When I think about really good biscuits I think of Granny’s, Granny Gazzie’s, and Frankie Chastain’s. And I’m pretty partial to my own biscuits 🙂
Last night’s video: Children Should Play Outside, Hard Work, & Matt Might Be Allergic to ME!
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Good morning, all. A few “biscuit thoughts.” Growing up, I often spent the night with my best friend. Her mother made biscuits for breakfast every day. They were delicious and perfect. She used lard to make them and felt that was the most important ingredient. I’ve always loved to cook, and making really good biscuits has been a constant goal. I’ve tried so many recipes: those with butter as the fat, those with Crisco, various brands of flour, sweet milk, buttermilk, whipping cream, yeast and on and on. The one thing I have learned is not to handle the dough too much – no kneading, just a few folds. And I think rolling out the dough can make the biscuits tough; I prefer to pat out the
dough. I grew up eating lard but got away from it as an adult. For biscuits’ sake, I may have to reconsider.
Here in Southwest Virginia, White Lily is probably the flour of choice. But I have discovered another brand that is even silkier: Hudson Cream. Not all of our
groceries carry it, though.
The homemade biscuit: such a simple, delicious food. But in my opinion, such a challenge to get right!
Before I ever read this post I had decided I was making biscuits, the new oven hash brown recipe, and eggs for breakfast tomorrow. : )
Where I came from biscuits never made it to the slop bucket! In fact a biscuit rarely left the table in any container other than someone’s belly.
The little piggies and the quite large piggies need to end up in the biscuits instead of the biscuits in the piggies.
That homemade breakfast sounded good! I usually make breakfast at home, but I do use the canned (whack-‘em) biscuits. I never got the hang of making homemade biscuits. I need to try your biscuit bread recipe you showed on the video the other day. It looked good and easy. Today, we decided to treat our granddaughter to IHOP for breakfast to celebrate her getting her braces off this morning. I have always enjoyed their crepes with Lemon Ricotta mixed berry flavored. Back in late January I had got them after a doctor visit and they were delicious! Well, not today. The crepes were the worse I’ve ever had, hardly any lemon ricotta filling in the crepes at all, maybe a teaspoon smeared in the middle. There were no mixed berries either. They had put a Loganberry sauce on them. I didn’t mind the sauce, but not having hardly any filling, nor tasting like lemon ricotta at all was just sad. Plus they charged a fortune for the bad food we got, which is even sadder. We won’t be back for sure. It just doesn’t pay to eat out any more. I’d much rather fix food at home. Saves money and taste a lot better!
My mother made excellent biscuits! But, she always deferred to her best and lifelong friend who made even better ones. Bessie’s biscuits were the stuff of dreams. Her dough was always perfect and never rolled. She squeezed it between thumb and forefinger then popped it off and put it in a lightly greased pan or cookie sheet.
I’d sure love to have me some of Bessie’s biscuits and side meat.
Blessings to all . . .
I also grew up eating fresh buttermilk biscuits. Wish I had
paid closer attention tomy mom’s talents.
Even the grandchildren ( now ranging 36-41) would fight for their
preferences . Mom would even take a pan out early
for those who wanted them barely browned.
Biscuits and molasses ! YUM
Biscuits and homemade apple butter and blackberry jelly ! YUM
biscuits and fresh tomato ! YUM
Thank you for the post and memories!
I am very blessed to have precious memories of enjoying breakfast cooked on my Grandma’s wood stove early in the mornings. She always had “a plenty” to eat. Biscuits and gravy were my favorites.
Grandpa would open the kitchen door and the cool breeze would blow in making the warmth of the stove a welcome pleasure. Oh, those meals were so good. We all sat and ate together at the table. I’d watch Grandpa saucer his coffee and make mounds of fresh butter mixed with sorghum syrup and watch as he “sopped” it up with his biscuit. Of course I imitated that practice and still do to this day. It’s amazing what a child learns from observing the grown ups. Little ones need good examples to follow and live throughout their lives. I thank God for the precious family members that have left lasting impressions on my heart and in my mind. Life is good when we can remember parts of our lives that make us feel warm and happy inside. I am blessed and thankful.
Great poem and wonderful comments this morning. My mom made delicious biscuits and I think they must have been a similar recipe. She seemed to have the magic touch for just enough kneading without overworking the dough. I loved molasses from childhood. And very rarely (when my grandfather was still alive), we occasionally were lucky enough to get “black strap” molasses from Kentucky as a gift. I too, would swirl it with butter and put it on the biscuit one bite at a time. It would be great to have your recipe for biscuits Tipper.
I too was blessed to get homemade biscuits from both sides of my family, but I do believe my mother-in-law made the best ones. The first time I ever ate with my future husband’s family, I thought, boy these are some of the best biscuits I ever ate! We called her Granny Hayes, and I watched her take a huge bowl and throw everything together and the next thing you knew she was making them by hand, never cut out and she would have a huge pan full and every one of them seemed to be the exact size. So good! I also use to watch my grandmama make hers and they too were also very good. I make mine and press the dough and cut them out. Mine would be a hundred different sizes if I tried to roll them out by hand. I do love biscuits but still love cornbread the best.
My mama would let us eat left over, cold biscuits as a mid-morning snack. She taught us to turn them on their side (think car tire), poke a hole with our finger, and pour Brer Rabbit syrup into the hole. So good, and not so messy.
My Grannie made home made biscuits every morning for 50 years; when Grandpa passed. The little bit of dough she had left was always given to whichever cat she had at the time. She got out of bed about 4 am and walked through her house to see if any relatives had come in and bedded down on pallets on the floor during the night; doors were never locked. Once she made her bed check, she knew how many biscuits to make.
I am part if the fortunate generation that was able to eat hot biscuits made in a wood cookstove. Back in the day my mom had one until she got her electric stove. My grandmother died before she was ever able to have a wood cookstove, but no need to feel sorry for her. Grandma Ida was one of the happiest people I ever knew, and she had time to cook biscuits for skads of grandchildren. I look back and wonder how that was possible. No molasses ever, because grandpa had loads of honeybee hives. They never stung him, but they sure did a number on bare feet. Loved that poem, and the simple sweet visual it gives us.
Whops and whack’ens, I like that! Just the right degree of ‘don’t care for ’em much’. I think I will remember and every time I do I’ll have to smile.
It is a bit off the subject and doesn’t fit present company, but it has always bothered me for people to judge things they don’t have the background to see into. That has always been an ‘off puttin’ thing with some of the visitors to Appalachia. But it taught us not to do it.
I have already left a comment, but the poem and the line about giving the leftovers to I assume the pigs and other comments about biscuits reminds me of my Uncle David Babb and something I heard him say when I was young kid. He was a German POW during WWII and the only thing I ever heard him say about this, besides telling about General Patton freeing him, was about being so hungry he would dream or hallucinate and see those leftover homemade biscuits floating on top of Grandmother’s slop bucket and how bad he wished he had one. A slop bucket was a bucket for scrap leftover food that would be fed to the hogs. His daughter was 4 years old before he ever saw her and she told me her Daddy would never tell or say anymore than this about the time he was a POW. I hope none of us have never been or will ever be that hungry.
Thank you for sharing! My mother could make the best old fashioned biscuits and gravy. I miss her cooking all the time!
I have never tasted anything that was better than the homemade version. Never. I remember swirling real butter into the sorghum molasses and we never gained weight. It was a healthier way to eat and to live.
Now I’m hungry for hot biscuits with butter and blackberry jam!
My mother in law made the best biscuits. The left over ones were wrapped in foil on table . I would snack on them a few days. Miss her and those simple biscuits. The closest to them are Mary B’s biscuits in freezer section of our local grocery
My daddy called biscuits in a tube “whops” also, as opposed to “cat heads” which meant homemade. I’ll always be grateful to you for the heavy cream & self-rising flour recipe because it makes the best biscuits I have ever had.
There’s nothing like good homemade biscuits. Both my mother and daddy made biscuits, both equally good. Until I left home, I never once ate toast or cereal for breakfast. We always had a breakfast of grits, eggs, biscuits and some type of pork meat seven mornings a week. My favorite breakfast of all was fried out fatback, biscuits, and milk gravy (hunky doo gravy-family name) made from the fatback grease. If I was on death row, I think I would ask for that for my last meal. My parents would get up together early enough to cook these breakfast before Daddy left for work or us kids would leave for school. Icing on the cake was to have a home grown cantaloupe to go along with this. Now the best I can do is these frozen biscuits. I heard an old time preacher once say it sounded like war each morning on his street around daylight when the women went to popping open those can biscuits. My late wife never learned to make biscuits but could cook the best cornbread you ever put in your mouth. I haven’t had any good cornbread since she passed away. None that I get know taste like hers.
Randy, I believe you could make some biscuits. Go to Tipper’s two ingredient biscuits, heavy cream and flour. They are really good! I like to make biscuits using Southern Biscuit Formula L Biscuit Mix. All you do is add your buttermilk to this. It has flakes of shortening and butter in it. Directions are on the back of the bag. Give it a try. If I can do it, anyone can. Good Luck!!
Gloria, I will have to give them a try. In the mean time I will eat the froze Mary B’s or Phillsbury biscuits
I love to eat left over biscuits in the morning for breakfast. To me they are as good as cake. 🙂 I like mine with good honey or red raspberry jam. I am Yankee who has lived in NC for many years but I grew up on my grandma’s & Mom’s good baking powder biscuits. I loved strawberry season because there was always a big plate of biscuits in the kitchen. We had strawberry short cake for breakfast if we wanted. It was the one time Mom would let us eat dessert for breakfast. 🙂 We most generally went to a patch & picked “lugs” of strawberries for shortcake & many jars of homemade jam. BUT, we also would go out into the fields when we camped in northern Mich & picked those tiny red gems. OH, they were so good. We’d sit around the camp fire in the early mornings with the mist rising off the fields & eat wild strawberries on our cereal. Wonderful memories.
I adore this sweet memory and how it floods me with thoughts of my Maw Haley. We didn’t see much of her at meals – she was always in the kitchen ‘fixen’ something. Fresh biscuits for breakfast and sometimes for supper. Fried fat back, grape jelly, and oleo. We lived in Wisconsin (Dairy state) where selling oleo was prohibited in law. But summer vacation meant Maw’s South Caroline home, we had oleo, soft and easily spread. We loved it. Of course, there were no leftovers around her huge table – she knew exactly how much to fix just by the feel of the dough. She always made a small bit too much for me and my cousin to make into biscuits, cookies, and pies on the back porch screen sills. We rolled with a jelly jar and decorated and filled our dusty concoctions to feed to our own baby dolls – loved to play in that dough!
Not sure why my comment came across as my husband. He didn’t cook dinner but he sure loved it!
Tipper, I just had to share that I hosted Sunday dinner yesterday for all my family. We had Chicken and Noodles, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans with Ham, Onion and Potatoes, Corn Casserole, Dinner Rolls and dessert was Granny’s Holy Smoke Cake. Everyone loved it and gave it a thumbs up! Tell Granny thank you for the video and sharing her tips making it.
Growing up with a wood stove in the house, no central heat, dressing for school by the heat from the kitchen fireplace, biscuits and gravy for breakfast every morning except weekends, those are wonderful precious memories for me. The men always ate first at my house, too, and I always wondered why when the women did all the work!
Now I know it was because they needed to eat and get back to the fields, the factory or wherever.
Personally, I don’t do the canned biscuits, which don’t even taste remotely like homemade. We do without or I make them fresh.
There was nothing as GOOD as my granny’s homemade goodys from her wood burning stove. Our children don’t know what they are missing. Have a blessed day.
Oh how this poem brings back memories of my mother, getting up early building a fire in a old wood stove. While the kids were still Sleeping she was making this wonderful aroma come through this old house. We would wake to the smell of country ham and biscuits and her soft singing. How this wonderful mother of 13 kids could be singing (3 of the 13 died at birth 1 other died at 2 years old) is now is just amazing.
We lived on a farm and raised a hog and calf for meat and always had a huge garden, which my mother canned the veggies, and also canned the sasauge,which she ground from the hog. We all worked including the older girld, 7 girls 4 boys. You worked or diden’t eat.
I was about 7 years old before we had electricity, about the only thing I rember about not having power is sitting on mothers lap her helping me to read.
Made me chuckle when I read”whack-ems”. We call them pucks, or hockey pucks. I love hot homemade biscuits with real butter and molasses. Mmmm doggies. To be honest I love a cold biscuit later too. My mamaw could be found eating an “old cold biscuit” as she called it. It was tradition at our family gatherings that women ate last. One of the kids asked why and the only answer I had was “it’s just always been that way”. I still go last as my momma did. Now that it’s just hubby and me at home, he insists on waiting on me, a lot. Kinda nice!!
My granny called the prefab version, “whop biscuits”. When I first heard her say she was cooking” wok biscuits”, that’s how I heard it, I didn’t know what she was talking about. She said, yeah, you take the can and WHOP it on the side of the counter. She always made homemade biscuits, but was older and having health issues during this visit. I’ll always remember that.
Grannys biscuits looked good in your video, Tipper.
Another good one. I don’t think I have heard how Granny Gazzie’s got her name or if that is really her name?…sounds so interesting. God Bless.
Glenda-thank you! Gazzie was her real name. I’ve often wondered if came from Gaza in the Bible. Her whole name has an interesting story I need to tell it 🙂