Biscuits

I can't think about biscuits without smiling and remembering my friend Lyford. He grew up in the keeper's house of an island lighthouse in the 30's. Eventually the family moved ashore, or at least to a larger island were there where neighbors and things like stores and schools and electricity. Lyford was in the sixth grade then and when lunch time came he broke out the biscuits and jam that his mother had packed for him. He looked around and noticed that his classmates weren't unwrapping biscuits. Everyone else carried sandwiches made on sliced bread. Lyford said it was the first time he'd ever seen such a thing and he developed a lively trade switching his mother's biscuits for store bread sandwiches. It was a novelty to the scholars on both sides of the trade. As he told me the story I could imagine young Lyford eyeing the Wonder bread sandwiches and wondering what his best trade might be. I can't eat a biscuit without thinking of his story.

I bake my biscuits using Bakewell Cream which is packaged and distributed by the Winterport Company just around the corner and up the Penobscot River from me. I use it, and Crisco because it makes lofty, light biscuits without much effort on my part. Dinners like chili, beef stew, and corned beef all present an excuse to bake some biscuits. After dinner the left over biscuits go in the biscuit jar to wait for the next morning. Nothing beats one split in half, buttered and grilled on the stove for breakfast. Washed down with a swallow of coffee, it's just the thing to brighten the prospects for my day.