My husband is the biscuit maker in our family, and he makes one mean biscuit! It is light, golden brown, and mouth-watering delicious! It is more than adequate within itself, but it is also the perfect place to plop down brown gravy, homemade muscadine jelly, or a piece of fried bacon or ham. I would put it up against any grandma’s or any other biscuit-making mama out there. I brag about him and his biscuits on a consistent basis lest he become discouraged and quit. Then we would be biscuit-less, skinnier, healthier and depressed.
I think he started out making biscuits in desperation. He waited patiently for twenty or thirty years or so for me to take up the craft and make some, which I did a time or two but then discarded the entire idea. It was way too much work, and the end product just didn’t live up to my expectations as chef extraordinaire. He finally gave up on my lack of consistency and made the mistake of cooking biscuits that far outshined my feeble efforts. Just like that, BAM! He assumed the chef’s hat of baking biscuits in our house! Abstaining from making the little brown bread was one of the best decisions I ever made, even if my biscuit making grandmas would be ashamed of me.
Before you judge me, let me explain. He makes biscuits, dumplings, the deer roast and deer fry meat, shrimp and grits and fries the fish and I cook almost everything else. He and I are happy with our little arrangement, even though it seems somewhat unbalanced, it is not.
There is a reason Kirk only cooks certain delicacies and I cook life sustaining foods. While it is an irrefutable fact that he outshines me in the aforementioned dishes, he can’t hold a light to all the additional dishes that grace our table. He knows it, I know it, the kids know it, the grandkids are starting to learn it and even my daughters-in-law and my girl, Vic (whom I helped raise and never did manage to teach her how to cook) would agree. I am the queen when it comes to home cuisine! Forgive me, dear readers, if I come across as arrogant. You haven’t tasted his other attempts.
I will agree, however, that when my husband makes up his mind to conquer truly conquer – a new recipe, he can, and he does it with perfection. I keep waiting for him to venture out and do just that. He seems somewhat reluctant and lacking in ‘wantto.’
In his areas as master chef, particularly when it comes to biscuits and dumplings, I dare not tread lest I disrupt the balance in the kitchen and squash our marital bliss. It’s kind of like mowing the yard. That’s his domain. He is good at it – professional almost. If I overstepped my boundaries, climbed on the mower and started mowing it might give him the idea that I was attempting to usurp his position as king of the lawn and heaven knows, I don’t want to do that. I once made the mistake of weed eating in the backyard and now it’s my full-time baby! (I can’t fail to mention that the backyard looks like a flower jungle and needs little-tono weed eating!)
So, in order to maintain a happy marriage, I relinquish all future attempts and ideas to make biscuits or dumplings or shrimp and grits and hand it over to my fine husband. These are irrevocably, understandably his and his alone to make, to bake, to gloat in. Hail to the king!
Love, as I so well know, can be built around a good biscuit. By the way, did I mention I love him a whole lot?