This morning I got sweaty hot hanging up laundry while standing a foot off the ground on a lingering snow bank in a pair of Mr Handsome’s rubber boots. (I was wearing other clothes, too, but no coat.) As I pinched the clothespins to fasten the towels to the underwear to the shirts, three separate flocks of geese flew above me, heading due North. I felt like kicking up my heels to the tune of their nasal honk-honks.

Which was a good thing because The Baby Nickel was using a hammer in the clubhouse and I had to ‘kick up my heels’ (read, walk/waddle/stomp) the whole way across the back forty to confiscate it. And then to the house because Yo-Yo was hollering about Something Or Other. And then over to the pump to redirect (that’s such a nice way of saying ‘making her quit’) Sweetsie who had decided that two feet of melting snow didn’t provide sufficient moisture for the great, gloppy, squishy outdoors and was filling up the green watering can, and completely disregarding my stern “turn it off right now” commands.

It was a rough day. All four kids decided to cop an attitude. Simultaneously.

Take lunch, for example. Sweetsie coughed without covering her mouth or turning her head. Miss Beccaboo yelled, “COVER YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU COUGH!” and then drove the point home by coughing in Sweetsie’s general direction without covering her mouth.

“Both of you go sit on the sofas,” I ordered. “Sweetsie, you on the brown and Miss Beccaboo, you’re on the green. Now, practice coughing into your elbow for a bit.” They commenced hacking.

The Baby Nickel looked at me and then coughed, mouth uncovered, all over the table. “Do you want me to go sit on the sofa till I can work it out?” he inquired happily, sliding off his stool before I even had time to answer.

And so it went.

Last night when I was tucking Sweetsie into bed, she said, “Can we have Dutch puff for breakfast tomorrow? We always have granola and oatmeal and baked oatmeal and I’m tired of that stuff!” I studied her, my sulky, blond-headed, thumb-sucking third child, and then said yes.

This afternoon she came into the kitchen where I was preparing to bake a pan of baked oatmeal for tomorrow’s breakfast. “Why do we always have to have this rotten old stuff! I don’t like baked oatmeal! We always have to eat it!”

“Honey,” I said, “You can’t have everything you want all the time. I listened to what you said last night and made Dutch puff for breakfast this morning, so I don’t want to hear you complaining now. I don’t want you to be a kid who fusses whenever you don’t get what you want. You need to appreciate what you have and quit the whining.”

“Then why don’t you give me to Shannon!” she retorted. (My friend, mother of Sweetsie’s friend.)

Humph, I thought. Don’t tempt me.

Ponder this: Life is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

For much of the morning my kitchen windows were foggy because I was boiling down another four gallons of sap to yield another pint of liquid gold. If you try to tell me I’m not a magician, I won’t believe you.

Mr. Handsome set the alarm for three a.m. Monday morning. He needed to take the two loaves of bread that was busy proofing in the refrigerator out of the refrigerator so that they would be ready to go in the oven first thing in the morning—he wanted to give a loaf to the owners of the house where he’s been working over in WV. I left the house before him that morning to go to an appointment, all four kids in tow. The house was a disaster when we left, but five hours later when I returned, it was spotless, the only thing out of place was a solitary loaf of bread, wrapped in a red-checked cloth, that was sitting on the counter by the stove, forlorn and forgotten.

The peanut butter sandwiches we had for lunch were extra delicious.

There are still huge swatches of snow on the ground, several feet deep in some spots, but there are also huge bare areas. The kids run around in shorts and tee-shirts, sprinting through the drifted snow in their bare feet to get to the trampoline, the clubhouse, the chicken coop, the barn. When they come inside, their fire engine-red toes track water and mud everywhere.

Yo-Yo and Miss Beccaboo painted their arms and legs with mud—it was their armor, they said—but then they couldn’t wash off at the pump because the water was too cold (and they had to stand in snow to get to it).

This climate is foreign to me. I feel like we’ve been relocated to a different country, maybe Iceland, and like a National Geographic photographer ought to be snapping photos of our exotic existence.

The robins were singing this morning.

I know I’ve been loading you up with carb recipes. Consider it your last chance to indulge before we get inundated with crunchy green things. Before long we’ll all be outside digging in the dirt, and our tastebuds will have shifted from craving stews and hot biscuits to longing for spinach, lettuces, and new peas.

But we’re not quite there yet. We still have a few more weeks left in which to use up all that produce that got put up last growing season. And so we grit our teeth and cook up another bag of frozen green beans, open another jar of canned fruit, thaw another quart of strawberries (to go with the Sweetsie-loathed oatmeal breakfasts).

The following soup recipe does not cause me to grit my teeth, flavor-wise, in any way, but it is, in my mind at least, a winter dish. Hot soup equals frozen ground, no?

However, if you have a few wrinkled, sprouting spuds rolling around in the bottom of the crates down cellar, this recipe is for you. It’s a deeply comforting soup, guaranteed to make you feel like you’re still snuggling at your mother’s breast. Even though the mere thought of simmering and boiling may make your spring-lusting soul cringe, this soup is bound to make you relax, slow down, and take it one muddy day at a time.

On the other hand, it might make you want to get outside right this very minute and sow even more potatoes than you were originally planning on planting.

Creamy Potato Soup with Bacon and Boiled Eggs

5 pounds potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 onions, diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
1 bay leaf
5 cups of water
1 cup cream or half-and-half
12 eggs, hard-boiled
6 pieces of bacon, chopped
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups grated cheese such as Cheddar, Monterey Jack, or Colby

Fry the chopped bacon in a large soup pot till crispy. Remove the bacon pieces and set aside. Drain off all but two tablespoons of the bacon drippings.

Add the onion and celery to the soup pot and saute over medium-high heat for about ten minutes or until they have softened. Add the chopped potatoes, the bay leaf, and the water and simmer till the potatoes are fork tender. Add the salt, pepper, and cream and heat through (do no boil). Remove the bay leaf and taste to correct seasonings.
To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and top each bowl with a diced, boiled egg, some crumbled bacon, and a generous sprinkling of cheese.

About one year ago: my OCD indulgence and a warm winter day. Apparently, what goes around, comes around.

The children are outside cavorting in God’s white, cold, windy, big world, and I’m inside doing one, or all, or a combination, of the following: twiddling my thumbs, checking email, baking biscuits, pacing, taking pictures, making business phone calls, and writing. It’s hard for me to settle into a groove when my kids are playing so nicely. I feel like I need to do something important to fully appreciate the blessed peace, but since I’m not sure exactly what that important thing would be, I fritter away the precious moments thinking about what would be the best way to spend it. Follow? No, I didn’t think so.

The other reason I have such trouble settling down is because at any minute (LIKE RIGHT NOW) the doorknob will rattle and a kid will come stomping in and demand something of me. Loudly. So whatever I choose to do has to be something interruptable. (And yes, spell check, that is a word.)

So I’m making and photographing and (soon will be) tasting biscuits. I figured (after I started them) that they were an all-around good activity to get into because if the kids get hungry, then I can just hand them a brown paper bag filled with piping hot biscuits and send them off on their merry way, thus buying me more time to write about the bag’s contents…which would be biscuits, in case you’re having trouble following.

Okay, now I’ve shipped out some buttered biscuits, fielded another phone call, and I’m almost out of time. Let’s get down to business.

I don’t make biscuits all that often. They involve last-minute work, something I don’t need while in the midst of The Arsenic Hour (when everyone is falling apart at the seams and you seriously consider sprinkling some arsenic in their food), and often by the time I’ve finished pulling together the main dish and a couple veggie sides, I’m ready to ditch the bread side all together, or else just slice up a loaf of sourdough if it’s absolutely necessary to have another starch (and it usually isn’t—I was raised by a mother who thought it appalling to serve both spaghetti and bread sticks).

But there is something quaint and comforting about a hot biscuit. Light and tender and made just for that moment. Because of the work required, biscuits aren’t an afterthought, but rather an actual thought-out gift, made all the more special because they aren’t a central part of the meal.

So what does it say about my gracious hosting skills that I preassembled biscuits for our company dinner last week and then forgot to serve them? I don’t think it says anything actually, except that I am an airhead. Even while I was groaning over my ditzy-ness, I knew we were okay food-wise, seeing as we had a triple batch of Indian chicken and mounds of brown rice, green beans, applesauce, pickled beets, and chocolate-dipped pistachio shortbread for supper. I guess you could say the biscuits weren’t exactly crucial.

I made the forgotten biscuits for lunch a couple days later. My parents were visiting and I served all the leftovers from the former company dinner (and we’re still eating the Indian chicken leftovers). I enjoyed the biscuits, but they didn’t rise as high as I had hoped.

I made biscuits again for supper last night. These rose sky-high (perhaps because the oven was hotter), dragging my droopy spirits right up along with them. Throughout the rest of the evening, whenever the word “biscuit” floated through my brain, I had happy thoughts. In fact, I couldn’t wait to get the kids to bed so I could have one of the leftovers.

There were still two biscuits when I went to bed and I told Mr. Handsome in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed, under any conditions whatsoever, to touch those biscuits in the morning. They were for my breakfast. And my first thought upon waking this morning? Biscuits and coffee for breakfast! Whoo-hoo!

I am officially obsessed.

You know how leftover quick breads often seem to turn dry and tasteless after a day or two? Well, these biscuits don’t seen to have that problem (though they’ve only sat around for about twelve hours, max, so I can’t say I know this to be actually true). Even twelve hours after being pulled from the oven, they are still light and flaky, tender on the inside and slightly crispy around the edges. I’m kind of crazy about them.

As for the biscuits I made this morning, it appears that they were trying to do jumping jacks in the oven. The hot, hot air made them leap high and then freeze, slightly slumping over to one side.

Beautifulness!

Deliciousness!

Forget what I said about not being a biscuit lover. I didn’t know what I was talking about. And now I do. I am, now and forevermore, a biscuit devotee, buff, afficionado, fan, etc, etc, etc.

Sky-High Biscuits
Adapted from Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Small Breads by Bernard Clayton Jr.

A couple notes about the ingredients:
1. There is no sugar in these biscuits, so for those of you who are abstaining from processed sweeteners for lent, eat up. Warning: eat one of these biscuits spread with butter and drizzled with honey and you’ll feel as guilty as sin.
2. Lard. I use lard. I love lard. Lard is light and lovely and ethereal. But, if you’d rather not use lard, use butter or solid vegetable shortening. (But lard is better.)
3. The recipe calls for milk, but I’ve been using some soured raw cream that I found in my freezer. Do what you’d like, but I’m convinced that the cream makes the biscuits even better.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/3 cup lard (see note)
3/4 cup cream (or half and half or milk—see note)
cornmeal for sprinkling

Mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Using a fork, cut in the lard. Add the cream and stir to combine. The dough will be dry and crumbly. Turn the dough out onto the table and knead briefly, just enough to bring it all together. Roll, or pat out, the dough till it’s about ½ inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a glass, cut out the biscuits. (Important: cut straight down through and come back up again without twisting the glass, as twisting the glass will smear the edges and perhaps inhibit their sky-high rising inclinations.) Gather up the dough scraps and re-roll and cut, till all the bits have been used up (but be gentle—don’t overwork the dough).

Place the biscuits on a greased baking sheet that has been lightly sprinkled with cornmeal and bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Yield: 8-12 biscuits, depending on the thickness of the dough and the size of your biscuit cutter.

About one year ago: Dark Chocolate Cake with Coconut Milk.

Nearly every night before settling the kids in bed, we read to them. Mr. Handsome corrals the two younger ones and hauls them upstairs to their bed where they lay on either side of him as he reads piles of picture books. As for me, I claim the cozy space in front of the wood stove, on the center cushion of the green sofa. Yo-Yo flops around in the space on my left and Miss Beccaboo nestles up on my right, so close that it feels like she’s trying to fuse her bony shoulder to my rib cage.

I love reading to the older children now that they are able to enjoy books far beyond their reading abilities, books that I enjoy and care about. Our last book was James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small. When we finally finished it (it’s an enormously long book!), I was more than ready for a change. I didn’t give any thought to what the next book would be until the next night at bedtime when the kids hopped onto the sofa and looked at me expectantly. Then an idea of a book, one that I had thought of many a time before but each time promptly discarded as being “too old for them” flashed through my mind and I thought, I’m gonna do it! Hot diggity-dog, I think it’s finally time! And then I hit the uppermost button on the ceiling of the glass elevator and we shot up, higher and higher and faster and faster, till we burst through the ceiling and out into open air…

Um, wait. Wrong story. I read that one to them long ago (and more than once), but I declare, the thought of my new grown-up book made me feel like a maternal version of Willy Wonka, all spastic and adventurous and slightly cuckoo.

I ordered the kids to sit tight and sprinted up the stairs and down the hall to my room where I flopped down on the floor and cocked my head sideways to study the shelves of books. When my eyes finally landed on the plain, black hardback, I snatched it up and came thundering back down the stairs, waving it in the air triumphantly. “Lookie here!” I crowed. “I’m going to read you one of the best books of all time! Ooo, I can hardly stand it! I AM SO EXCITED!”

The book in my hand? To Kill A Mockingbird, but of course.

We’ve been reading for a few days now and in last night’s reading Atticus shot the mad dog (is there anything sexier than a scholarly man who, under duress, suddenly whips a gun to his shoulder and—BANG!—nails a rabid dog in the head? Right, I didn’t think so) and Jem went apeshit and slaughtered Mrs. Dubose’s camellias. At a couple different points, the kids, freaked out by the turn of events (Calpurnia pounding on the Radley’s door and yelling “Mad dog comin’!”; Mrs. Dubose, mouth agape, tongue undulating, and eyes unseeing, slowly rocking her head from side to side as she waited for the alarm clock to jangle) huddled close by my side, feet tucked up on the sofa, safely out of reach of the under-the-sofa monsters.

The book is far above their reading level (especially when you consider that Miss Beccaboo isn’t yet reading) but I’m impressed with how much they understand, or at least attempt to understand. These are some pretty big issues we’re delving into. “Why was Calpurnia supposed to go to the Radley’s back door instead of the front?” and “What do you think a ‘morphodite’ is?” (When I explained that it is someone who is both male and female, Yo-Yo said, “Yeah, some people say God is a morphodite. I learned that in Sunday school.” Oh. My. [I love my church.]) “Why do you think the book is titled ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’?” We have discussions about addictions and true strength, about rabies, about bartering and share croppers and the value of education, especially in the early years (according to Jem, you don’t learn anything till the 6th grade anyway).

Then there is the whole issue of Scout asking for someone to “please pass the damn ham” and calling her cousin a “whore lady.” We laugh uproariously at her adventures, but when Miss Beccaboo asked us to pass the ‘damn ham’ at supper (there was no ham in sight) I had to explain that us older people (that would be the four big people at the table) got the joke, but that since the little kids don’t have the same discretionary powers (and that’s a gracious over-estimation of the older two children’s abilities), we’d best keep the joke under wraps.

And of course I’m driving home the point that they should never ever ever, under any condition, use the n-word. Apparently I drove the point home really well because Miss Beccaboo said, “Can’t you just say ‘black people’ when you read? Do you have to use that word? I don’t like it.” I explained that while it’s not a good word to use, it’s central to the book and I needed to use it so that they could more fully understand the story.

We finished Part One last night. Part Two, da-dum, da-dum, is the beginning of the court case. It’s going to involve lots more explaining and some interesting conversations. I can’t wait.

And in the meantime, while my evenings are spent engaging my children in literary, cultural, and social code cracking, I’ve gone and cracked a culinary code, one having to do with—you guessed it—crackers. (When you view the world through the eyes of a sleuth, life seems kind of fun. Everything—crackers, words, math problems, compost, chicken sex—appears to be a great mystery, ones that are quite possibly solvable.)

I’ve made crackers many times before. I’ve done wheat thins and graham crackers and twice-baked tasty morsels, but I have never really learned to make a good cracker till this past week.

By “good” cracker, I mean, light-crispy as opposed to tough-crispy. My wheat thins (the graham crackers will be a separate post all together if I write about them [which there is a good chance I won’t, seeing as I don’t have a recipe that I’m head-over-heels with] ) have always been kind of grayish and leathery-hard. Tasty, yes. Nutritious, yes. But they had to be consumed with something else, like hummus or dhal. They weren’t something that you’d want to pick up and munch on for munching’s sake.

These babies, however, these darling little puffy-crisp squares, have officially blown me out of the realm of bleh crackers and into cracker nirvana, where tender, crunchy, buttery, salty crumbs spill from smiling lips every which way you look.

Depending on how you roll out the dough, these crackers can take on a variety of textures and shapes. If you roll them on the thicker side (about 1/8th of an inch) and cut them small, you get puffy, bite-sized crackers that are similar in appearance and texture to oyster crackers. If you roll them thinner (1/16th of an inch) and cut them bigger, you get a flatter cracker that is more along the lines of a saltine—one that you can crumble into a bowl of soup or top with a slice of cheese or schmear of peanut butter.

Of course, like good literature, there are endless variations and interpretations of this cracker. Sesame seeds, poppy seeds, fancy salts, and whole grains are just a few of the ways you could take them. The truth is, the more you play around with them, the greater your understanding of the humble cracker will be.

Soda Crackers
Adapted from Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Small Breads by Bernard Clayton Jr.

I’m not a fan of veggie shortening, even the trans-fat free kind, but I keep in on hand for the odd recipe. I thought about subbing it out for coconut oil, lard, or butter, but decided against it—I wanted to sample the intended cracker first. However, once I sampled the end results, they were so darn fine that I couldn’t bring myself to make even a single solitary changes the next time around. But, I’ve only made these a couple times so far. I have every intention of making them over and over again, and as I experiment, I will report back here. You do the same, okay?

The directions say to “relax” the finished dough in the refrigerator for 1 to 18 hours. The first time I made the crackers, I let them chill overnight, but the second time, they languished in the fridge for several days before making their way into the oven, with no discernable negative side effects. As a result, I believe this dough is quite forgiving and flexible.

In regards to the matter of salt: sprinkle on a lot. The first time I was too timid with it, but the second time around certain people felt I employed too much (about ½ teaspoon, I think). I, however, thought it was wonderfully salty, so I just told them to be quiet and brush it off if it didn’t suit their fancy. The bottom line? I recommend erring on the side of too much salt rather than too little; the extra salt brushes off easily, but it’s pretty darn near impossible to add it to the finished cracker. You may, however, disagree with me. I won’t hold it against you.

This recipe makes 100 small crackers. It may sound like a lot, but it’s not. They get scarfed down before they’re even properly cooled, so do yourself a favor and double or triple the recipe.

1 ½ cups flour, plus more as needed
2 teaspoons yeast
½ teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 tablespoons solid vegetable shortening
2/3 cup warm water
2 tablespoons melted butter, for brushing
coarse salt, for sprinkling

Mix together the first six ingredients (down through the cream of tarter). Using a fork, cut in the vegetable shortening. Stir in the warm water, turn the dough out onto the counter and knead for a minute or two, adding more flour as needed (I used about an extra half cup), until the dough is silky smooth. Place the dough in a buttered bowl, one that is big enough to hold double the amount of dough (it will rise and then deflate), cover with plastic wrap, and place the bowl in the refrigerator for 1 hour and up to several days (see note above).

When you are ready to bake the crackers, remove the dough from the fridge and turn it out onto a lightly floured counter. Roll the dough into a rectangle, about 6″ by 18″ and 1/8″ thick. Fold the dough over as you would a business letter (making three layers of dough), transfer the dough to a greased cookie sheet, and roll the dough out to the same proportions again.

Prick the dough all over with a fork, every quarter inch or so, spritz the dough lightly with water, and sprinkle the dough with coarse salt (see note above). Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into squares, making them as big or as small as you like. (I made mine about one inch square, give or take an inch.)

Bake the crackers at 400 degrees for the first ten minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 350 degrees for another ten minutes, rotating the crackers if necessary. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees and bake for another 5-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the crackers. The goal is to get a golden brown cracker with totally dry innards. Watch them closely.

Remove the crackers from the oven and immediately brush with the melted butter. When they are completely cooled, store in an airtight container at room temperature. (I imagine they freeze well, too, though I haven’t had a chance to try that yet.)

Yield: about 100 deliciously crunchy morsels

I am submitting this recipe to yeastspottings.

About one year ago: Fire-safe.