My biscuits are to die for

Yesterday morning I woke up with a fire in my belly.  Yes, that's right, I needed biscuits.  Well, Saturdays being what they are, I never got around to hauling out the flour, the baking power, the salt, the sugar, the milk and other necessaries.  Instead, I let Jerry make some of the nicest scrambled eggs I have had in a long while.  He whipped them with a hand mixer, adding both water and milk.  As additions, he sauteed onions, used grape tomotoes and, when all were cooked and almost ready to eat, he added an ingredient from the top of the list of the food of the gods.  Yes, this time, as you may have guessed, it was feta cheese.  This feta we had this time was so creamy (but not too creamy), so salty (but not too salty) and had the best texture, just enough structure to dampen your teeth before they click down together.  It finished off the eggs beautifully.  Not a word was exchanged as we devoured the Greek delight breakfast -- made by a skinny little Catholic boy -- on that Saturday morning.

Now to Sunday.  The fire in my belly had grown to 3 alarm. I had to have biscuits.  I was hungry because it was already past noon.  I found a Paula Deen recipe, y'all, that I have used before and went about my business, Jerry sacked out on the terrace, in a lounge chair, after a long sleepy affair called Greek Church under his belt.  He deserved my biscuits.  I deserved my biscuits.  I smiled, imagining how he would react when he walked into the kitchen and smelled the biscuits in the oven.

I mixed all the dry ingredients together.  I cubed the butter and began cutting it into the mixture.  For some reason, this is a very satisfying and pleasurable (yes, Joe, pleasurable) experience.  The way the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder start to combine along with the butter is a process you don't ever experience anywhere else.  It is smooth like rubbing velvet together -- and slippery -- all at the same time.  It is sensual.  But the slipperinesss and the sensuality are only momentary (just like real sensuality).  Before I got too used to it, before I could take it for granted, the slipperiness changed to dry powder like corn meal.  So, for one brief moment, there was a seductive ooziness that I alone experienced.  I felt the sensation with my fingers but I received it in my brain -- the most sensual of all human organs.  There is nothing like it.  It's a rush.  Once you do this enough times, you just know when the mixture is ready and I knew that this mixture was ready.  Now.

I added some of the milk.  Yech -- my least favorite part of making biscuits.  Sticky, gooey, like wallpaper paste.  Stuck to my fingers, stuck to the hair on my hands, collected underneath my fingernails.  Appetizing, huh?  But a necessary part of the process.  I have read that the mixing of dough for biscuits and other baked goods requires oil from human skin to make the baked good really, really its best and I expected, wanted, demanded that my biscuits be their best.  So, I mixed the milk into the dry stuff like there was no tomorrow, ending up almost plastered up to my elbows -- okay, not that far up but you get the picture.  I did have a bit of dough on my nose because I had an itch there right in the middle of the process.  Why does my nose itch every fucking time I mix biscuit dough?  Does that happen to everyone?  Is it a rule of nature? Whatever -- it always happens.  At least to me.

And, then, in an instant, the stickiness, the gooiness, the pastiness, subsided -- just a bit, just ever so slightly.  And I knew I was done.  The dough was done.  The mixing was done.  Thank God.

Floured the counter and spread out my dough.  Slightly golden from the butter, slight flecks of shininess also from the butter.  OMG I could eat this shit raw.  I took out a wine glass and begain circling out the biscuits.  All in all, I had 19 biscuits.  A good haul.  The oven was already at 440 so I popped them in, dropped the temperature to 420 and started the frantic clean-up.

To really enjoy biscuits, I find that all the crap and flour and sticky messy dough has got to be cleaned up, the dishes and utensils washed off and put in the dishwasher -- out of sight and out of my mind.  I don't know why, but for me, this makes the biscuits taste better.  It also passes the 10 minutes or so while the biscuits are baking.  Without the cleanup, I just stand at the oven, leaning over, nose to glass, watching them bake, mouth drooling, eyes darting from 1 biscuit to the next and, usually, I end up mowmow-ing down on some inferior but easily accessible food because my stomach is telling me it needs filling NOW.  So, from past history, I know to do the clean up in just the right amount of time for the baking.  Today, it was perfection.  Just when the butter knife was washed and in the dishwasher, and the butter on the plate was warming and loosening up and ready to be spread (yes, Joe, spread), I looked over at the oven.  The timer said 9 minutes and 51 seconds.

The time has come.

I just stood at the oven.  Leaning over.  Nose to glass.  Watching the biscuits, watching them bake, mouth drooling, eyes darting from 1 biscuit to the next.  Sound familiar?  Each little biscuit had turned golden brown on the top and around each little, ever so gently rounded crest.  They looked perfect.  The smell was overwhelming.  The timer now said 10 minutes and 12 seconds.

I opened the oven and took out the tray.  The intense heat washed over my face, making me flushed.  Then the smell -- dough, hot flour, butter -- biscuits!  One gentle, little push on the one biscuit smack dab in the middle and I knew I would be eating soon. 

I filled 2 plates, softened butter on the edge of each, and distributed the goodies.  And we ate.  2, 4, 6, 8 and so on.  There was no silence.  We talked to each other quickly and excitedly, in giddy responses of smacking lips and "ummming" moans.  We licked our lips and our fingers, we split them down the middle and buttered them like bitches.  And we ate them.  God damn, they were good.  Who really needed the after-thought bacon.  BISCUITS. Brief crunch on the outside and then warm, fluffy, almost like cotton candy insides.  Unimaginable delight.  Unimaginable satisfaction.  Unimaginable.  As I write this post, sitting up on our high benches at the tall counter, my scrumptious little golden brown biscuits are just barely visible over the top of my laptop.  My fingers are still slightly oily from the butter and smell of deliciousness.  My stomach is smiling.  The 6 remaining biscuits are winking at me.  Job well done, sir.

Those biscuits were good.  I have done something good today.  I have made something out of nothing.  Look everyone -- Lew made biscuits.  And then he ate them.  And it was love.  The fire has been reduced to smoldering embers of a happy and fulfilled stomach.

Is there any doubt why I will never lose another pound in my lifetime?