Okay, I need to post something more cheerful than that last post, which by the way, had me so agitated that when I told George about it, I could do little more than sputter, “TAPE!” over and over.

So, instead of talking about that, let me tell you what I did today. Hayley went to see George’s parents this afternoon, George was working, and Breanna went down for a nap around 2:45. And rather than surfing mindlessly through the blogs that rarely update on the weekend anyway, or zoning in front of the television, I found myself suffering from Izzy Stevens Disease* and couldn’t stay out of the kitchen.

It started innocently. Last night, I sat on the floor with my recipe box, wondering if I could find anything to make that would get us out of our current tasty but repetitive menu. While sifting through recipes I had forgotten I even had, I found my grandmother’s “recipe” for baking powder biscuits. And I say “recipe” because she had been making them for decades, every week since – I don’t know, probably a young teenager. She didn’t measure anything anymore so her recipe is basically stuff like “about two cups of flour”, “a bit of salt”, and “just slowly add some milk, not too much, just until it feels like dough”. Uh, yeah. Okay!

But you know how they say smell has the strongest ties to our memory? It’s true, but the closest runner-up for me is food. I remember eating her baking powder biscuits on the weekends, sometimes with a bit of cheddar on them but usually just margarine, and the best was when I lucked out and got them while they were still hot. She never used a timer and her house was always so busy so they were almost always a little scorched on the bottom but it never mattered because they were good. I still laugh because I remember my sister’s friend Leanne eating one at lunch and saying, “this is good. My grandmother makes these too. But hers aren’t burnt on the bottom.” Out of the mouths of babes!

So I got my “recipe” out, had a bit of anxiety over whether I could make them the same or whether I would really never have her biscuits again, and you know what? They’re not perfect, they’re a bit chewier rather than flaky, but they taste exactly the same.

Cutting out circles:

Golden and ready to cool off:

Then I turned the oven up another 25 degrees because I remembered that at breakfast, Hayley and Breanna and I ate the last of the cinnamon chocolate chip muffins I had made the other day. Hayley had asked for some more and although the remaining chocolate chips were meant for banana cookies, the bananas weren’t brown enough yet, so I went ahead and made Hayley’s muffins.

And then, since I hadn’t spent enough time in the kitchen yet, I cleaned up and tossed together my mother-in-law’s carrot soup since I had found that recipe too. Luckily George had gotten two frozen pizzas for supper since I was kind of kitchen-ed out by then, but we each had a bowl of carrot soup first. Breanna ate an entire (toddler-sized) bowl herself, barely giving me time to eat some of my own before she’d be pointing and signing for more.

Simmering it up:

itting in Tupperware, waiting to be served and devoured:

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Aggie’s Baking Powder Biscuits (as best as I can offer):

2 C flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
1/3 C shortening or butter or margarine
Pinch of salt (maybe 1/2 tsp?)
1 Tbsp sugar

Mix all together, then add *about* 3/4 to 1 cup of milk. Add slowly, mixing periodically to see how the dough is. Get it so it’s just moist but not goopy and sticky. If that happens, add more flour.

Turn onto floured counter and roll to about 1-inch thick. Cut with round cookie cutter or glass. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets at 400C for 10 to 15 minutes. Makes about 16.

My MIL’s Carrot Soup

2.5 C sliced carrots
1 medium onion, diced
1/4 C uncooked rice (instant or regular)
2 Tbsp butter or margarine
1.5 tsp crushed garlic (I just used 1 fresh garlic bud, finely chopped)
5.5 cups hot water
2 heaping Tbsp chicken base powder or 2 bouillon cubes (vegetarians can use veggie broth bouillon)

Melt butter in pot and stir onion, garlic, and rice until mostly soft. Add carrots, water, chicken base, and bring to a boil. Lower to medium and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, until carrots are soft and rice is cooked. Remove from heat. Once it’s cooled down for about 15 minutes, pour into blender and puree until smooth. Delicious and surprisingly filling!

No recipe for the muffins – I used an all-purpose muffin mix, a cup of water, an egg, and just added half a bag of chocolate chips and a teaspoon or so of cinnamon. But they’re tasty!

It smelled so freakin’ good in here.

*For the five people in the world who don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy, the reference is to that show, where surgeon Izzy Stevens bakes a ridiculous amount of muffins and breads whenever she doesn’t know what else to do. When her fiance died, she baked so much you couldn’t even see her counters.