by Jeannie Travis
Yep , I can just smell them cookin’, and reading about those ‘bisquits’, as some call them , sure made me hungry. And it also brought back memories of when I was a little girl growing up on a farm in West Tenn. Mama used to use a wooden dough bowl in the same way your folks used a piece of wax paper. She’d sift a mound of flour into it. Using her fist she would make a dent in that cone of flour, add a blob of lard and some milk then work it up with her fingers into dough. This was dumped out onto a biscuit board that was always kept upside down on the flour barrel .[ So she could use the back of it for a work surface…] She rolled out the dough and cut it out with a dented Pet milk can with one rim cut off…I mean it was sharp! That old can had been used so many years it was dark colored and had many dents and creases. It had cut out a many a light fluffy biscuit and delicious tea cake made with rich sweet milk from our cow and orange yolked eggs from our own hens.
Oops ! Better get back to those biscuits! Mom had some old black dented up tin pans that she baked biscuits and tea cakes in. She would put the biscuits in them in tight rows, then dip the back of a stirring spoon in lard or in the fat from frying bacon or sausage, and this was rubbed on each biscuit top before sliding them into the oven. Now,when I began cooking, I just melted a gob of lard in the pan and turned each biscuit over in it. Mama thought this was wasteful, but then she kinda resented the fact that the kids liked my biscuits better than hers. I told her I didn’t put any grease in the biscuits, so it all evened out. Don’t know how this worked but it did. One thing I couldn’t argue with though, I couldn’t stand that dough squishing up in my fingers so I stirred the dough up in a pan…and usually left that pan for her to wash! [Guess we called that pan a ‘stewer ‘ back then..or maybe I used an aluminum puddin’ pan…] After we put the pans of biscuits in the oven we would scrape the rest of the flour into the sifter and lay it, the rolling pin and the little Pet milk can in the big biscuit bowl and put it down in the flour barrel…
Touching back on those tea cakes….Mercy, were they good ! If it weren’t for the fact that I would eat too many I would keep those crispy taste treats on hand all the time. We used to sit there eating the hot cookies as fast as Mama could bake them till she’d finally run us all out of the kitchen, including my handsome blue eyed Daddy. Otherwise we wouldn’t have any for snacking on later on. Sometimes she would be in a hurry and just roll the cookies out and cut them with the big butcher knife Daddy made from part of a saw blade. When I see that knife in my kitchen drawer I am reminded of those wonderful days of long ago, when Daddy and his little stairstep children clustered around that big table he made and ate those delicious hot cookies. It’s such a treasured memory, as we were always laughing and happy at those times.
by Jeannie Travis
Yep , I can just smell them cookin’, and reading about those ‘bisquits’, as some call them , sure made me hungry. And it also brought back memories of when I was a little girl growing up on a farm in West Tenn. Mama used to use a wooden dough bowl in the same way your folks used a piece of wax paper. She’d sift a mound of flour into it. Using her fist she would make a dent in that cone of flour, add a blob of lard and some milk then work it up with her fingers into dough. This was dumped out onto a biscuit board that was always kept upside down on the flour barrel .[ So she could use the back of it for a work surface…] She rolled out the dough and cut it out with a dented Pet milk can with one rim cut off…I mean it was sharp! That old can had been used so many years it was dark colored and had many dents and creases. It had cut out a many a light fluffy biscuit and delicious tea cake made with rich sweet milk from our cow and orange yolked eggs from our own hens.
Oops ! Better get back to those biscuits! Mom had some old black dented up tin pans that she baked biscuits and tea cakes in. She would put the biscuits in them in tight rows, then dip the back of a stirring spoon in lard or in the fat from frying bacon or sausage, and this was rubbed on each biscuit top before sliding them into the oven. Now,when I began cooking, I just melted a gob of lard in the pan and turned each biscuit over in it. Mama thought this was wasteful, but then she kinda resented the fact that the kids liked my biscuits better than hers. I told her I didn’t put any grease in the biscuits, so it all evened out. Don’t know how this worked but it did. One thing I couldn’t argue with though, I couldn’t stand that dough squishing up in my fingers so I stirred the dough up in a pan…and usually left that pan for her to wash! [Guess we called that pan a ‘stewer ‘ back then..or maybe I used an aluminum puddin’ pan…] After we put the pans of biscuits in the oven we would scrape the rest of the flour into the sifter and lay it, the rolling pin and the little Pet milk can in the big biscuit bowl and put it down in the flour barrel…
Touching back on those tea cakes….Mercy, were they good ! If it weren’t for the fact that I would eat too many I would keep those crispy taste treats on hand all the time. We used to sit there eating the hot cookies as fast as Mama could bake them till she’d finally run us all out of the kitchen, including my handsome blue eyed Daddy. Otherwise we wouldn’t have any for snacking on later on. Sometimes she would be in a hurry and just roll the cookies out and cut them with the big butcher knife Daddy made from part of a saw blade. When I see that knife in my kitchen drawer I am reminded of those wonderful days of long ago, when Daddy and his little stairstep children clustered around that big table he made and ate those delicious hot cookies. It’s such a treasured memory, as we were always laughing and happy at those times.