The McHive: March 2013

Them Chive?

While typing in this blog address I realized that instead of The McHive it could be read as Them Chive. Mmmm them chives....

The prompt that...prompted this blog.

Might as well start somewhere!

Prompt: Breakfast

I always associate breakfast with my grandmother’s kitchen. If I close my eyes I can still smell bacon frying in her very old, very loved and very worn cast iron pan. On the counter cocktail sausages hugged by rolled out biscuit dough (the canned kind) are still steaming. I always burned my fingers and tongue from sneaking one fresh out of the oven, well before they were cool enough to eat.

My grandmother is an intimidating woman with bright red curly hair that’s starting to thin on top. She fusses and chases my cousins out but doesn't seem to mind me kneeling on a stool watching her make from-scratch biscuits. She never measures anything. She scoops out flour from a worn sack by the handful, adds a pinch of salt from her palm, baking soda with a teaspoon and rubs butter--always butter, never margarine or lard--with her fingertips. She pours buttermilk into a well in the center of her bowl and knows exactly when to stop. She mixes with hands, pours the whole bowl onto a floured counter and kneads briefly. “You’ll always know when it’s enough, and then you stop” she says, looking down at the dough before glancing at me with a smile “It will feel right in your hands.” She folds the dough over once and then dusts the top of a small juice glass. The circles of dough go onto a cookie sheet snuggled up close together (“they’re better when they’re together, too rough when they rise up alone”) and drizzled with melted butter.

She doesn't use a timer, but exactly 13 minutes later (always 13 minutes) she pulls them out. She tells me that she could smell they were ready to come out. My grandfather enters the kitchen, drawn in by the intoxicating scent now wafting out of the kitchen. From the living room I can hear my brothers and cousins fighting over a cartoon. My grandfather leans over and kisses my grandmother, trying to sneak a still hot biscuit from the tray behind her back. She notices, of course, and swats at his hand, but he takes one anyway and gives me half. The biscuit is hot in my hand and hotter in my mouth but is buttery and delicious and melts on my tongue.

My grandfather passed away when I was a teenager, and my grandmother stopped making biscuits. I am a mother now, with my own husband and child. I don’t think I will ever be able to make her biscuits by instinct, without the precise measurements afforded to me by special cups and spoons, but I make them anyway. I never wait for them to cool before trying one. I always burn my fingers and tongue just a little bit, but as the buttery biscuit melts in my mouth I close my eyes, and, for just a moment, I’m a little girl again, in my grandmother’s kitchen.

Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup (5 1/3 tablespoons) butter
1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon milk + 1 tablespoon lemon juice or while vinegar. Stir and let it sit for a few minutes).

1) Preheat oven to 425.
2) In a medium bowl sift together dry ingredients. Rub in butter with fingertips (or forks, or a pastry blender, or whatever you want) until mixture resembles coarse meal.
3) Pour in buttermilk a bit at a time, mixing with a wooden spoon or your hands until dough sticks together and pulls away from the sides.
4) Turn dough onto a floured surface and gently knead 15-20 times. Dough will be sticky.
5) Pat or roll out dough to 1" thick. Cut biscuits with a 2.5" cookie cutter or the edge of a glass dipped in flour. Repeat until all dough is used. Brush off excess flour and group biscuits together on a greased baking sheet. Brush tops with melted butter if you like (I recommend!)
6) Bake 13-15 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Serve hot with butter, jam, honey, sausage gravy, bacon gravy, jelly...

So there's this blog thing people do...

Testing, testing, 1 2 3.

Is this thing on?

Right then.

Welcome to my blog Mom, other family, and random people who stumbled here.

I avoided making a blog for years. Didn't understand why anyone would want to read my random thoughts. The whole thing seemed a bit narcissistic--not that there's anything wrong with that! It just wasn't really something that interested me.

So why now?

It started with a prompt. I wrote something just for me for the first time in...well a very long time. And I remembered exactly how much I used to love writing. Still do, apparently! And then I thought it would be nice to have a reason to write again. Even if me (and my Mom ;) are the only ones to read it.

Then I thought it might be fun to be able to share pictures of my son. I was told that I shouldn't share his name on the internet to protect him from dark shadowy perverts track him down, so I assume that giving him the pseudonym Seven will keep shadowy internet perverts from thinking gross things about his pictures (which I will post).

So, if you happen to be someone who isn't already a friend or family member, here's a quick About me:

I'm Sarah. I will be 28 very shortly. I'm a Southerner who was transplanted to the wild white North after Hurricane Katrina. I have been married for 3 years this coming October to my BFF McHubs. We live in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. I'm currently staying home with my 7.5 month old son Seven while I figure out what I want to do with my life. I love to write but don't think I write well enough to get paid to do it. I love to take photographs but don't think they're pay-worthy. I love to cook but don't think I cook well enough to...well, you know. Sensing a theme?

I don't have a very clear idea of what I want the theme of this blog to be. I'm trying to make myself write more, so I'll be answering prompts, I think. Maybe I'll share some recipes I've discovered. I'll probably share my son's birth story (spoiler: failed epidurals!) and will definitely share pictures and updates of him. Past that who knows?

So, um, stay tuned!