Teaching this old dog some new tricks

As I mentioned before, Older Daughter has taken it upon herself to be our family chef since moving back in with us. She's been creating some amazingly delicious meals.

Recently she made some biscuits. Just plain ordinary biscuits, using the exact same recipe I've used for 30+ years.

But then she taught this old dog a new trick and turned these plain ordinary biscuits into a culinary masterpiece.

She started by dicing cold butter.

Then she worked the butter into the dry ingredients with her fingers. (A pastry blender would also work.)

Here's all the wet and dry ingredients mixed and ready to roll out.

Here's where things got interesting. She rolled...

...then folded.

She repeated this step – rolling and folding – several times, to make "layers" in the dough. Whaddaya know. I always just rolled them out once and that's it.

Then she used an actual biscuit cutter to cut the biscuits. (I always used an upside down tumbler.) Apparently the sharp edges of the biscuit cutter don't "seal off" the edges of the dough the way a dull tumbler does, so the biscuits puff up into layers.

See the layers?

She finished the batch and popped them into the oven.

The result is flaky puffy biscuits that are out of this world. Who knew?

I realize this is probably old hat to most folks, but it came as a complete revelation to me. So yep, my young pup is teaching this old dog some new tricks. And boy are we enjoying the biscuits.

The little things in life

I found a new cookbook at a thrift store for $1.

I'm not the most creative person in the kitchen, so usually cookbooks aren't my favorite choice of literature. But this one is an exception. It has a rare combination of delicious recipes, lovely graphics, easy instructions, and simple ingredients.

(True story: One time I found a massive Martha Stewart cookbook in a thrift store for $5 and foolishly purchased it. One day I decided to use it to make a dessert for our neighborhood potluck. I couldn't get past the first directive, on the order of: "Book a flight to Florida, rent a car, travel to the nearest beach, and dip out some ocean water. Return home, evaporate the water to produce two tablespoons of sea salt..." The directions went on in a similarly complicated vein for three pages for a single dessert. I re-donated the book to the same thrift store shortly thereafter.)

Anyway, I had a bit of buttermilk left over from Thanksgiving and wanted to use it up before it went bad, so I decided to try the Southern Buttermilk Biscuits recipe found in my new purchase.

Since our wood cookstove is always in use now that it's winter, I've switched to using it almost exclusively for cooking and baking purposes. My only complaint with this superb stove is the oven is small, but it's perfect for biscuits.

Maybe it's a psychological thing, but stuff that comes out of a wood cookstove oven always seems to be perfect. In this case, golden and beautiful.

For such a simple recipe, these biscuits were absolutely phenomenally delicious. They're a new favorite.

A new cookbook, and a wood cookstove. It's the little things in life.